Christmas
Come, Your Heart and Voices Raising
- Words:
- Paul Gerhardt, 1667. Translation composite.
- Music:
- 'Quem Pastores' German, 1410.
- Setting:
- "The Lutheran Hymnary", 1913.
- Metre:
- 8 8 8 7
- 1Come, your hearts and voices raising,Christ the Lord with gladness praising;Loudly sing His love amazing,Worthy folk of Christendom.
- 2Sin and death may well be groaning,Satan now may well be moaning;We, our full salvation owning,Cast our every care away.
- 3See how God, for us providing,Gave His Son and life abiding;He our weary steps is guidingFrom earth's woe to heav'nly joy.
- 4Christ, from heav'n to us descendingAnd in love our race befriending,In our need His help extending,Saved us from the wily Foe.
- 5Jacob's Star in all its splendorBeams with comfort sweet and tender,Forcing Satan to surrender,Breaking all the pow'rs of hell.
- 6From the bondage that oppressed us,From sin's fetters that possessed us,From the grief that sore distressed us,We, the captives, now are free.
- 7Oh, the joy beyond expressingWhen by faith we grasp this blessingAnd to Thee we come confessing,That our freedom thou hast wrought!
- 8Gracious Child, we pray Thee, hear us,From Thy lowly manger cheer us,Gently lead us and be near usTill we join the angelic choir.
Scripture
Topics
In the hymnals
- The words are in 8 hymnals indexed by Hymnary.org. Their history →
- The tune, Quem Pastores, is in 155 hymnals. The tune →
Words, music and setting are in the public domain. The score is from the Open Hymnal Project (Brian J. Dumont), which places its own work in the public domain. The piano is the FluidR3 General MIDI sound font (MIT licence). How many hymnals print a hymn, and when it was written, is from Hymnary.org.