188. Go to Dark Gethsemane

The Story Behind the Hymn

James Montgomery, already discussed elsewhere in this collection as author of 'Angels from the Realms of Glory' (hymn 131), 'Hail to the Lord's Anointed' (hymn 132), and 'In the Hour of Trial' (hymn 114), wrote this hymn's text in 1820, structuring it as a sequential meditation walking through several distinct scenes of Christ's passion in order — His agony in the garden of Gethsemane, His trial and crucifixion, and finally His resurrection — with each of the hymn's several verses directing the singer's attention to a different specific location or moment.

The hymn's repeated opening command, instructing the singer to actively 'go' to each successive scene rather than simply reading or hearing about it passively, reflects a devotional technique with roots in older traditions of guided meditation on the events of Christ's passion, inviting the singer to imaginatively place themselves at each specific location in turn rather than observing the crucifixion narrative only as distant historical information.

Given Montgomery's own well-documented personal history of imprisonment for his political convictions, discussed at greater length elsewhere in this collection, his repeated instruction throughout this hymn to actively 'learn' specific spiritual lessons from each scene of Christ's suffering — to pray from Gethsemane, to endure from the trial, to triumph from the resurrection — reflects a consistent theme found across much of Montgomery's hymn writing: a conviction that suffering, rightly approached, becomes genuinely instructive rather than merely painful.

Richard Redhead, an English organist and composer, wrote the tune most commonly associated with the hymn considerably later, and the completed hymn has remained a standard piece of Holy Week worship, particularly favored for Maundy Thursday services specifically commemorating the events in the Garden of Gethsemane the hymn's opening verse directly addresses.