184. As With Gladness Men of Old

The Story Behind the Hymn

William Chatterton Dix, already discussed elsewhere in this collection as author of 'What Child Is This' (hymn 109), wrote this hymn's text in 1860, five years before that better-known carol, reportedly while confined to bed by the same serious illness and accompanying spiritual crisis that would later also produce 'What Child Is This.'

Unlike that later carol, which focuses on the nativity itself, this hymn draws on Matthew 2:1-12, the account of the magi following a star to find the infant Christ in Bethlehem, using their specific journey as an extended metaphor for the ongoing Christian life more broadly — just as the magi were guided by a visible star toward Christ, the hymn asks that believers be similarly and continuously 'led' toward Christ throughout their own lives, extending the magi's one-time journey into an image of sustained, lifelong spiritual guidance.

The hymn was written specifically for use on the Feast of the Epiphany, the day in the traditional church calendar, observed on January 6th, commemorating the magi's visit and, more broadly, the revelation of Christ to the Gentile world beyond Israel — giving this hymn, alongside relatively few others in this collection, a specific liturgical association with a distinct church observance separate from Christmas Day itself.

Conrad Kocher, a German composer and church musician, composed the tune commonly paired with the hymn, and Dix's text, despite emerging from the same period of illness and personal crisis that also produced his better-known Christmas carol, has remained in steady use specifically for Epiphany worship, offering congregations a hymn tied to a specific, less commonly observed point in the Christian calendar rather than to the far more widely celebrated occasion of Christmas Day.