I must needs go home by way of the cross

I must needs go home by way of the cross. Jessie Brown Pounds* (1861-1921). Written before 1906, when it was published in Living Praise No 2 (St Louis, 1906), edited by Charles Hutchinson Gabriel* and William Worth Dowling (1834-1920). It is sometimes known by its refrain, ‘The way of the cross leads home, leads home’. The second line, ‘There’s no other way but this’, was probably responsible for a note by Gabriel in The Singers and their Songs: sketches of living gospel hymn writers (Chicago and Philadelphia, 1916): the author was quite innocent of any controversial spirit. She had heard it urged that this hymn teaches that there is no safety beyond the line of conservative theology. The...