Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone? -- Thomas Shepherd and others

 

A 17^th Century English preacher was apparently mulling over a sermon, and was also at odds with the exercise of his faith. This was not an isolated mental and emotional state, even across many decades and centuries, as subsequent authors took up Thomas Shepherd’s original verse in 1693 that asks “Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone?”, and added to it. George Allen and Henry Beecher were Shepherd’s successors 150 years after the first verse was penned, completing the five-verse collaborative effort by the mid-1800s. All three shared a connection to the God they chose to serve, through the music and poetry that lives on. It’s a lesson for those of us who pick up an old tune or poem today. Get in touch with that God-given musical-spiritual glue that bonds people several centuries apart today.     

 

The 28-year old Thomas Shepherd was an Anglican minister in 1693, who was thinking over a sermon about the cross his Christ bore at Calvary, and about how he might best serve Him for the remainder of his life. He apparently placed himself in the great apostle Peter’s sandals at first, the man who chose to be crucified upside down because he considered himself unworthy to be executed in exactly the same position as Jesus; his original thought was later changed to reflect the question regarding Jesus’ cross. Thomas apparently wanted fellowship with this Jesus in not just a casual way – how could he suffer for him, or in other words, what was his cross? Was his current assignment a sufficient way to mimic the God who suffered and was executed? Was the magnificent church building and the prominent position he held as priest in a congregation at Buckinghamshire (northwest of London) really sacrificial? It’s not a stretch to infer that the following year’s decision that Thomas made was part of his cross, when he left the Church of England and became an independent minister. He eventually found himself ministering to believers in a barn, prior to a chapel being built for this body of Christian believers at Bocking (east of London, near the coast), where he remained for the rest of his life (nearly 40 years).

 

Over a century later, Shepherd’s one-verse poem-question had travelled across the Atlantic Ocean and found its way into the hands of George Allen, a professor of music at Oberlin College in Ohio in 1844. Just over a decade later, a pastor named Henry Ward Beecher also picked up Shepherd’s poem in Brooklyn, New York in 1855. Both Allen and Beecher added verses to underscore the Christian’s response to the cross at life’s end; any burden bore during life was worth what His cross bought. We know not the circumstances that spurred Allen and Beecher to add verses about this symbol of sacrifice, and whether in fact either of them knew of Shepherd’s ministerial path across the ocean. The crown that these two poetic successors expected to receive in His presence was enough. It’s the same crown exchanged for a cross-bearing life to a 17^th Century Englishman and to these 19^th Century Americans. You think it’s the same one in the 21^st Century? Same God, same cross, same crown, I’m betting.   

 

See more information on the song story in these sources: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; and Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1990.

 

Also see this link, showing all five original verses: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/m/u/s/t/mustjesu.htm

 

Also see this link for author’s biography: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/s/h/e/p/shepherd_t.htm