Immortal, invisible, God only wise

Immortal, invisible, God only wise. Walter Chalmers Smith* (1824-1908). First published in Smith’s Hymns of Christ and the Christian Life (1867), in the third section, ‘Hymns of the Holy Trinity’. It had six stanzas. This text differs considerably from the one found in most modern hymnbooks, apart from the resounding first stanza. The hymn was published in a revised form in William Garrett Horder*’s Congregational Hymns (1884) and in his Worship-Song (1905), and thereafter in EH, after which it became very widely known. EH produced what is now the customary text in four stanzas, using the first three stanzas followed by two couplets taken from the last three (stanza 5 lines 1-2, stanza 6...