Lyrics
Fight the good fight with all thy might,
Christ is thy strength, and Christ thy right;
Lay hold on life, and it shall be
Thy joy and crown eternally.
Run the straight race through God's good grace,
Lift up thine eyes, and seek His face;
Life with its way before us lies,
Christ is the path, and Christ the prize.
Cast care aside, upon thy Guide
Lean, and His mercy will provide;
Lean, and the trusting soul shall prove
Christ is its life, and Christ its love.
Faint not nor fear, His arms are near,
He changeth not, and thou art dear;
Only believe, and thou shalt see
That Christ is all in all to thee.
Public domain hymn text and tune (text 1863, tune 1864). Words by John S. B. Monsell; music by William Boyd.
The Story Behind the Hymn
John Samuel Bewley Monsell, an Irish clergyman, wrote "Fight the Good Fight" in 1863 and included it in his collection Hymns of Love and Praise for the Church's Year. The text draws its title and central charge directly from Paul's first letter to Timothy, chapter 6, verse 12: "Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life."
Monsell was known during his lifetime less as a hymn writer in isolation than as a vocal advocate for congregational singing itself — he pressed his own parishioners to sing with real feeling and joy rather than the subdued, formal style common in many churches of the period. Over his career he wrote some 300 hymns, collected across eleven separate volumes, of which this one has proven by far the most durable.
The hymn was set the following year, 1864, to the tune PENTECOST, composed by William Boyd, and the pairing has remained standard ever since. Structurally, each of its four verses opens with a brisk two-word imperative — fight, run, cast, faint not — paired every time with the same underlying claim, that Christ is the strength, the path, the love, and the constancy needed to carry it out.
The hymn found an unexpected later audience far outside church walls when it was featured in the 1981 Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire, introducing Monsell's nineteenth-century call to spiritual endurance to millions who had likely never encountered his name before.
