Christ Arose!

          Low in the grave He lay,

              Jesus, my Saviour,

          Waiting the coming day,

              Jesus, my Lord.

          Up from the grave He arose

          With a mighty triumph o’er His foes;

          He arose a victor from the dark domain,

          And He lives for ever with His saints to reign;

          He rose! He arose!

          Hallelujah! Christ arose!

          2.  Vainly they watch His bed,

              Jesus, my Saviour,

          Vainly they seal the dead,

              Jesus, my Lord.

          3.  Death cannot keep his prey,

              Jesus, my Saviour,

          He tore the bars away,

              Jesus, my Lord.                       BHB #344

        I’ve visited assemblies and churches with wide spectrums of doctrine but on Easter Sunday, this is the hymn they all converge on—Robert Lowry’s great hymn of resurrection. This is Saturday—“Low in the grave He lay”—the devil could honestly say, “Jesus is dead!” But then comes Sunday! Did the devil see this coming‽ We think not! “Up from the grave He arose!”
        Lowry is represented in the Believers Hymn Book by only this one hymn but he authored other well-known songs, including Shall we gather at the river, What can wash away my sin, and Weeping will not save thee.

        As well as his own songs, he was also the composer of

music for Fanny Crosby (All the way my Savior leads me), Annie Hawks (I need Thee every hour), and S. Dryden Phelps (Savior, Thy dying love).

        Robert Lowry was born March 12, 1826 in Philadelphia. At the age of seventeen, he joined the First Baptist Church there and became active in Sunday School work. After graduation from the University of Lewisburg (now Bucknell University), he served for many years as pastor in West Chester, Pa, New York City, Brooklyn, Lewisburg, and then in Plainfield, N.J. Later in his career, he took on the responsibility of publishing a succession of Sunday school song books, including Bright Jewels, Pure Gold, Royal Diadem, Welcome Tidings, and half-a-dozen others.

        One more song deserves mention—How Can I Keep from Singing? This appeared as a poem in 1868, then Lowry composed his own tune and published it in Bright Jewels for the Sunday School (1869). The song rejoices in the nearness of Christ, our Rock, because He is “Lord of heaven and earth.”

          No storm can shake my inmost calm

             While to that Rock I’m clinging.

          Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,

             How can I keep from singing?

        Folk singers, including Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, ‘Peter, Paul & Mary’, Enya, and ‘Celtic Woman’ have latched onto this song but they’ve taken Christ out of it. For them only “love” is lord, and they have inserted bits about tyrants and death knells—how sad. Only Audrey Assad has kept the full Christian association and the original words. 

        Lowry said of his songs, “The tunes of nearly all the hymns I have written have been completed on paper before I tried them on the organ. Frequently the words of the hymn and the music have been written at the same time.” Robert Lowry died at his residence in Plainfield on November 25, 1899, but his songs and music live on to bless us.