To Christ Be True -- Elisha A. Hoffman

What was on the mind of a 61-year old minister who’d held several positions and had taken on a new position not too many years earlier, as the 20^th century dawned? It shouldn’t have been too surprising that Elisha Albright Hoffman considered what human characteristics someone carries with himself from one place to another, and probably more importantly what he leans upon through difficult circumstances. Hoffman had been through many places and various situations, and so no doubt had concluded that he needed the words of “To Christ Be True” as much as others who would sing its words, as the 1900s developed.   

Many years, songs, churches, and experiences were in Elisha Hoffman’s rearview mirror in 1900, coloring what he would write as his newest ministry effort was developing. He was in Benton Harbor, Michigan at the time, a place on the far southeastern shore of Lake Michigan (see map), where he and his family had been for some five years. The strong sense of duty and loyalty of which he wrote in “To Christ Be True”, as well as the musicality he demonstrated in it, was inbred probably during his upbringing by Christian parents, including his father who was also a minister. Perhaps it was Hoffman’s first evident exhibition of duty and loyalty, albeit a short one, that showed itself when he volunteered in the Union Army in 1863 during the Civil War. His postwar education at Union Seminary was a precursor to his work at the Evangelical Association in Pennsylvania, following loyally in his father’s footsteps. During the next decade, his first wife died, leaving him a widower with three sons. Elisha would remarry and begin the first of four church ministry efforts by 1880; Benton Harbor was the third. Along the way, Hoffman would edit scores of hymnals and write some 2,000 hymns of his own, most of them probably while he was in the Michigan ministry. He must have encountered countless numbers of people in ministry by the time he reached three-score years, worshipped in various churches, and thought about what God wanted from him and fellow believers. How does one endure service in a war, suffer the loss of a young wife and have single-parenthood thrust upon you, and move around to take on new ventures in one’s chosen profession? By the time he reached 61, Elisha must have surmised that God provides. Why wouldn’t some choose to enlist in His army? Though his stint as a private in the Union Army had been brief (about a month, reportedly), perhaps its imprint on Hoffman was one of the most enduring of his life, including as he thought about loyalty to his God. Were those battlefield images still in his thoughts as he wrote about unfurling the Lord’s banner in conquest (v.1), volunteering for service (v.2), and especially about confronting conflict (refrain)? Does God provide difficult experiences so they propel us toward Him, and forward for the rest of life?   

Elisha may have asked himself, as any individual might after three decades, has this been worth it? What other way has a better track record? One might imagine Elisha telling others of his own episodes, and how he managed to come out the other side. He’d had good examples, apparently, including his parents, but he was molded by his own unique set of experiences too. In Benton Harbor, Elisha reflected and realized, probably not for the first time, that he was God’s tool, wielded in various places and despite—or perhaps because of—the challenges he’d met. No one is like me, exactly. But, I have the same God available to me as you. He can meld us all together to Himself, with this glue called Christ-loyalty.

See biography of composer here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Hoffman

Brief biography and list of composer’s works here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/h/o/f/hoffman_ea.htm

 
Site describes where composer was during the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benton_Harbor,_Michigan