Christ is made the sure foundation,
Christ the head and cornerstone,
Chosen of the Lord, and precious,
Binding all the Church in one;
Holy Zion’s help forever,
And her confidence alone.
To this temple, where we call Thee,
Come, O Lord of Hosts, today;
With Thy wonted loving-kindness
Hear Thy people as they pray;
And Thy fullest benediction
Shed within its walls alway.
Here vouchsafe to all Thy servants
What they ask of Thee to gain;
What they gain from Thee, forever
With the blessed to retain,
And hereafter in Thy glory
Evermore with Thee to reign.
Note: the later verse(s) below have been reconstructed from historical memory and may not be word-for-word identical to the original published text.
Public domain hymn text (1851 (English translation)). Words by John Mason Neale, from an anonymous 7th-century Latin original.
The Story Behind the Hymn
This hymn's underlying text originates in an anonymous Latin hymn dating from as early as the seventh century, originally composed for use specifically at the ceremony of church dedication — the formal liturgical rite marking the consecration of a newly built church building for regular Christian worship — making it, in its original form, one of the oldest surviving pieces of dedicated liturgical poetry for that specific occasion anywhere in Western Christian tradition.
The original Latin hymn's own author is entirely unknown, and it survived for many centuries primarily through use within monastic liturgical practice before John Mason Neale — already responsible elsewhere in this collection for translating 'Art Thou Weary, Art Thou Languid' (hymn 115) and 'Jerusalem the Golden' (hymn 117) — translated it into the English text commonly sung today, publishing his translation in 1851 as part of his broader lifelong project of recovering ancient and medieval Christian hymnody for English-speaking congregations largely unaware such a rich earlier tradition of hymn writing existed before their own more recent English-language hymns.
The hymn draws its central architectural image from Ephesians 2:20, which describes the Christian Church as a building with the apostles and prophets as its foundation and 'Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone' — and the hymn's own original liturgical use at church dedication ceremonies gave that architectural metaphor a literal, immediate double meaning: sung at the exact moment a physical church building was being formally set apart for worship, the hymn's words about Christ as the true 'foundation' and 'cornerstone' applied simultaneously to the literal stone building being dedicated and to the invisible spiritual reality the physical building was only ever meant to represent.
