Hymns by Women in the New Covenant Hymnal
Author: Chuck King
June 26, 2025
From Toronto to Urbana to Lausanne
Part 2: Margaret Clarkson
The twentieth century produced an impressive cadre of female hymn writers. In the context of the explosion of English-language hymn writing from the 1950s right through to 2025, the distinction has become unremarkable. But as I am highlighting female authors in The Hymnal for Worship and Celebration (HWC, the NCC hymnal), I want to draw attention to the author perhaps most influential among evangelicals.
Margaret Clarkson (1915-2008) was a teacher in Toronto (Ontario) public schools, with a brief sojourn in Wheaton as an editor at Scripture Press. She suffered various ailments throughout her life, remained single, and devoted her energies to teaching and ministry. Teaching in a remote Ontario village, she wrote “So Send I You” (1936, HWC 310) which became a standard missions hymn in the 1950s. Our hymnal includes this early version, and her reconsidered text, “So Send I You - by Grace Made Strong” (1963, HWC 311). I encourage you to look at these side by side. Her reconsideration of the call to service–and the role of God’s sustaining grace–is reflective of her growth as a servant of Christ.
Clarkson considered “We Come, O Christ, to Thee” her “first real hymn.” It was written for the first InterVarsity missions festival–now known as the Urbana Conference. Again, she demonstrated humility regarding her own poetry, and contemporized the text to what we sing, “We Come, O Christ, to You” (1946, HWC 117) . . . keeping ahead of pesky editors who eventually would have done so anyway!
Perhaps Miss Clarkson’s most famous (or infamous) revision is of a classic American hymn, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” She has been called out for changing the phrase (HWC 2, verse 2) “Here I raise mine Ebenezer/hither by Thy help I’m come” to “Hitherto Thy love has blest me/Thou hast brought me to this place.” A common criticism is that she removed the biblical reference, replacing it with its sense. (Some recent hymnals, and some contemporary settings, have restored “Ebenezer.”) I am on record saying that this change does not “dumb down” the song. Rather, it accommodates the sad state of biblical literacy in the modern church. The revised text allows 21st century singers to embrace the reality of the biblical truth without stumbling over “Ebenezer.” (I am also on record as preferring the original text!*)
Let me just mention in passing two other Margaret Clarkson hymns that we sing with meaning and gusto: “The Battle Is the Lord’s” (HWC 472)—she is certainly among the most prolific authors of missions hymns–and “God of the Ages” (HWC 568).
Steeped in the Bible and hymns from an early age, Miss Clarkson reflected on the words of these “two books of the Church” on walks to school and during long illnesses in which she was often suffering and recovering in solitude. (It is surprising to me that suffering does not occupy a noticeable place in her hymns.) In hymns she sensed “the community of saints” and carried on a kind of conversation with John Newton, Charles Wesley, Martin Luther, Fanny Crosby, and many other hymn-writing saints of earlier generations.
When she left home, she looked for “a church where good hymns as well as good preaching ministered” to her. I’m sure many at NCC find her a kindred spirit in that regard. She wrote: “God has so filled my heart and mind with himself, with a knowledge of his Word and with the glory of Christian praise, that it is sheer delight to serve my own generation in the will of God in the field of hymn writing.” Let us thank God that through her words in our hymnal, she still serves the Lord.
Sources: A Singing Faith (Hope, 1987); Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections staff
*It might be relevant, too, that (a) my family had a dog which my dad named Ebenezer, and we called Sneezer; and (b) most people associate Ebenezer with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
Chuck King, M.M., M.A., is Music Director of New Covenant Church in Naperville.
Photo by Geoff Chang on Unsplash.
BACK