Jesus, thou divine companion

Jesus, thou divine companion. Henry van Dyke* (1852-1933). The first version of this hymn comes from Van Dyke’s celebrated poem, The Toiling of Felix, printed in The Toiling of Felix, and Other Poems (New York, 1898). The sub-title of this was ‘A Legend on a new saying of Jesus’. The ‘new saying’ was ‘Raise the stone, and thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and there am I’ (from the Coptic Gospel of Thomas). It had four sections, entitled ‘The Vision’,‘The Student’, ‘The Hermit’, ‘The Worker’. Felix tries to find God in study, and in contemplation, and finds Him only in honest toil, so that the poem celebrates ‘the Gospel of Labor’. From the last section come the lines spoken by...