This hymn is not in Lutheran Service Book or Lutheran Worship, though it was TLH 164, and the Wisconsin Synod's Christian Worship still carries it. Isaac Watts (1674-1748), an Independent minister in London often called the father of English hymnody, published it in Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707). He divided that book into three parts, and the third was "prepared for the holy Ordinance of the Lord's Supper." This hymn opens that section, under the heading "The Lord's Supper instituted, 1 Cor. 11:23." It sets the scene of the upper room: "'Twas on that dark, that doleful night / When powers of earth and hell arose / Against the Son of God's delight, / And friends betrayed Him to His foes." From there it follows the words of institution as Christ takes the bread and the cup. Watts's convictions were mostly Reformed, and he did not confess the real presence, but he wrote his hymns so that Christians of every persuasion could sing them, and this one stays close to the words of Scripture (Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, and 1 Corinthians 11). The Lutheran Hymnal set it to ST. CROSS, a solemn minor tune by John Bacchus Dykes (1861).
Sung at Our Saviour
2026