Henry van Dyke (1852-1933) was a guest at the home of Augustus Garfield, president of Williams College in western Massachusetts, nestled in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. Henry was pastor of Brick Presbyterian Church in New York who visited the college as a guest preacher in 1907. Henry’s fondness for the outdoors was a vital dimension of his faith. His first sermon at Brick Church, “Voice of God,” was about hearing God in nature. One morning at breakfast, Henry handed his host a poem he had just written, saying, “Here is a hymn for you. Your mountains were my inspiration. It must be sung to the music of Beethoven’s Hymn to Joy.” Henry was quite taken with the joyful sound of the fourth and final movement in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and thought it should be utilized as the hymn tune. The hymn took hold, and we’ve been singing this joyful song ever since.
The hymn, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore You” resounds with praise for God’s creation. The opening stanza sets the table: flowers open to the sun above, clouds of sin and sadness disperse and dark and doubt are driven away. In the final stanza, the hymn directs us to petition this “Giver of Immortal Gladness” to “fill us with the light of day.”
Henry later spent twenty-three years as an English professor at Princeton. One of his Princeton classmates, President Woodrow Wilson, recruited him to serve as ambassador to the Netherlands and Luxembourg. I invite you to use the original version of this cherished hymn to center your day in joy and gladness: