Overlooked No More: Getting to Know the Hymn ‘Arise, My Soul, Arise’
Author: Chuck King
June 03, 2026
We will be singing “Arise, My Soul, Arise,” this Sunday.—Editor.
There it sits in our hymnal1, between “Wonderful Grace of Jesus” and “Grace Greater Than Our Sin,” in the section labeled “Jesus Our Savior: His Grace, Love, and Mercy.” I have overlooked it, or looked past it, many times. Recently it caught my attention because in another setting I am directing a choral arrangement of “Arise, My Soul, Arise.”2
Like the gospel hymns that flank it, this hymn has a strong tune written by an American composer. The tune is older than those more familiar tunes, and unlike them has been used for other hymns—though it is now known particularly with this text. Unlike those gospel hymns, “Arise, My Soul, Arise” does not have a refrain (chorus); it consists of stanzas only, in the pattern of English hymns.
“Arise, My Soul, Arise,” by Charles Wesley, first appeared in his 1742 collection, Hymns and Sacred Poems. Many of Charles Wesley’s poems became hymns. Our hymnal includes sixteen hymns by Charles Wesley, many of them sung here at least once per year. It is practically a cliché that hymnals abridge versions of his original poems (even reordering Wesley’s original verse order!). This hymn, by contrast, has only existed in the five stanzas we have. Furthermore, it contains no anachronistic vocabulary or awkward grammar.
How have I missed this hymn throughout my music ministry? Well, in the hymnals I have used that do include the hymn, it was printed with a tune that is woefully dated. This hymn just didn’t gain my attention until I began to rehearse it this past winter.
Before getting to the text, a word about the tune. The composer was a colonial New England singing school instructor, singer, and composer. The “fuguing tune” was a rugged American style of polyphonic music for mixed women’s and men’s voices. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, congregations would have sung it in a way that now sounds “choral” to our 21st-century ears.
As Hymn No. 199 in our hymnal, it looks like all other hymns with clearly aligned notes and syllables. I can’t help hearing this tune as confident, robust, and vigorous; and I can’t find an online recording that gets it quite right for me. When we sing this hymn in worship, you should hear a hint of the genesis of the melody.
The text, with comments:
1. Arise, my soul, arise. Shake off thy guilty fears.
“thy” here is the only archaic word form in the hymn
“guilty fears” are the fears that stem from our guilt
The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears.
Before the throne my Surety stands …
With this tune, the third line of the hymn includes a repeated phrase (indicated by …)
My name is written on His hands.
2. He ever lives above for me to intercede,
His all-redeeming love, His precious blood to plead.
His blood atoned for all our race …
Sometimes this is rephrased “for every race”
And sprinkles now the throne of grace.
3. Five bleeding wounds He bears, received on Calvary.
They pour effectual prayers; they strongly plead for me.
“Forgive him, oh, forgive,” they cry …
“Nor let that ransomed sinner die.”
4. The Father hears Him pray, His dear Anointed One;
He cannot turn away the presence of His Son.
His Spirit answers to the blood …
And tells me I am born of God.
The Trinitarian theology of this stanza is a powerful feature of the hymn.
5. My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear.
The direction of the act, “reconciled,” is ambiguous in this line. We should understand it as God reconciling us to Himself (as in “my God has reconciled”). That then conforms to “His pardoning voice.”
He owns me for His child; I can no longer fear.
With confidence I now draw nigh …
And, “Father, Abba, Father,” cry.
The third line of each verse—with its short phrase, repeated—is a departure from Wesley’s original. The original tune did not require or include the repetition. But I like how that line, from verse to verse, makes its own powerful statement:
Before the throne my Surety stands
His blood atoned for all our race
“Forgive him, oh, forgive,” they (the wounds of Christ) cry
And tells me I am born of God
With confidence I now draw nigh.
We have a Savior at the right hand of God, whose blood atoned for the sin of the world. He pleads our forgiveness, on the basis of His wounds; He assures us we are born of God. So, we now have confidence to draw near to the throne of grace.
What a hymn! What a Savior!
Chuck King is Music Director of New Covenant Church of Naperville.
1 “Arise, My Soul, Arise,” No. 199 in The Hymnal for Worship and Celebration.
2 I direct the Windsor Chorale at Covenant Living Retirement Community in Carol Stream.
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