Hymn of the Month: Immanuel's Land (BHB #190)

O CHRIST! He is the fountain,
   The deep, sweet well of love;
The streams on earth I've tasted,
   More deep I'll drink above;
There, to an ocean's fulness,
   His mercy doth espand,
And glory, glory dwelleth
   In Immanuel's land.

        This hymn, also called "The Sands of Time are Sinking", is just a few key verses from a nineteen stanza poem by Anne Ross Cousin. As she sat at her sewing one Saturday evening the words started to flow and, as she said herself, "...though I threw it off at that time, it was the result of long familiarity with the writings of Samuel Rutherford, especially his Letters."

        Anne Ross Cundell was born on April 27, 1824, in Hull, but the family soon moved to her surgeon father's hometown of Leith, near Edinburgh. Dr. Cundell died when Anne was only about three so we find her, at 15 years of age, living with her mother and one servant girl, in Great Stuart Street, in the Edinburgh parish of St. Cuthbert's.

        The very next time we hear of Anne is in 1847, in London, as she marries the Rev. William Cousin, a minister of the "Scotch" Presbyterian Church in Regent Square. Two years later, their first child was born, a son, John William

Muir Church, Irvine

Cousin. In 1850, Anne's husband was called to minister at Muir Church in Irvine, Scotland. It was in Scotland that five more children were born (three more boys and two girls) and it was here at the manse in Irvine that this amazing poem was written.

        Four verses are familiar to us from the Believers Hymn Book but many others are equally powerful, though not specifically as worship. For instance,

The King there in His beauty,
   Without a veil, is seen;
It were a well-spent journey,
   Though seven deaths lay between.

And,

The curse shall change to blessing---
   The name on earth that's banned
Be graven on the white stone
   In Immanuel's land.

        Just to remind ourselves---Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) was a Covenanter. His faith and the strength of his convictions landed him in jail several times. His love for the King, Immanuel, gave him an intense love for souls, too...

Oh! If one soul from Anwoth
   Meet me at God's right hand,
My Heaven will be two Heavens
   In Immanuel's land.

        Rutherford was on his death-bed when the courts ordered him to appear before them on a charge of high treason. Anne's expression is fitting for this soldier of the Cross...

They've summoned me before them,
   But there I may not come,---
My Lord says, "Come up hither,"
   My Lord says, "Welcome home!"

        Anne Cousin wrote this poem in 1854, published it in The Christian Treasury in 1857, then saw it appear as a hymn in the 1865 Service of Praise. It's been in countless hymnals since, including, of course, the Believers Hymn Book, first compiled in about 1884.

        Immanuel's Land was the last hymn given out by C.H.Spurgeon and was sung at his bedside on January 17, 1892, two weeks before his death. The poem has appeared in less-expected places too---for instance at a tearful (fictional) funeral in The Sky Pilot by Ralph Connor...

"And so on to that last victorious cry,--- 

I hail the glory dawning in 

   Immanuel's Land."

        Perhaps the oddest place we find the poem is in the Guiness Book of Records for 1981:

"The longest hymn...in English is The Sands of Time are Sinking by Mrs. Anne Ross Cousin nee Cundell (1824-1906), which is in full 152 lines, though only 32 lines in the Methodist Hymn Book."

      One reviewer called Anne Ross Cousin "a Scottish Christina Rossetti, with a more pronounced theology." This is high praise. But, without a doubt, she wove the Scriptural and Rutherfordian imagery with great skill and technical grace, into a poem that satisfies the Christian through endless re-readings.