Michael Schirmer (1606–73) published this text in Johann Crüger’s 1640 Gesangbuch, originally as a Pentecost hymn with seven stanzas—each designed to correspond to one of the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit in Isaiah 11:2. The Lutheran Service Book retains only three stanzas, which somewhat obscures that original structural intention. The text’s history is itself a composite: Schirmer borrowed his original third stanza from a hymn by Johann Heermann, and a 1657 Lüneburg hymnal anonymously reworked one of Schirmer’s stanzas and inserted it as the second. The English version weaves together two translators: Catherine Winkworth supplied stanzas 1 and 3 in 1863, while stanza 2 is drawn from W. M. Reynolds’s 1850 work, itself a composite of three different German stanzas. Few hymns in the hymnal have traveled as winding a road to reach us.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026