O Lord of hosts, who didst upraise

O Lord of hosts, who didst upraise. Arthur Christopher Benson* (1862-1925). This remarkable hymn was written in 1899, the year that saw the beginning of the South African War (1899-1902). It begins with a memory of the war hero and the great poet of the Old Testament, which leads the reader to expect a hymn that was written to give support to the war and encouragement to the troops. Instead, with the questions in stanza 2, it asks the difficult questions, with the figure of Christ crucified as an emblem of the answer. The hymn then expresses our own faults, ending stanza 3 with the almost paradox of ‘The far-off victories of love’, followed by the ‘Diviner echoes’ of sacrifice. It is not...