Lyrics
Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee;
Destitute, despised, forsaken,
Thou, from hence, my all shalt be.
Perish every fond ambition,
All I've sought, and hoped, and known;
Yet how rich is my condition,
God and heaven are still my own.
Let the world despise and leave me,
They have left my Savior too;
Human hearts and looks deceive me;
Thou art not, like them, untrue.
And, whilst Thou shalt smile upon me,
God of wisdom, love, and might,
Foes may hate, and friends disown me,
Show Thy face and all is bright.
Go, then, earthly fame and treasure!
Come, disaster, scorn, and pain!
In Thy service, pain is pleasure;
With Thy favor, loss is gain.
I have called Thee Abba, Father;
I have stayed my heart on Thee;
Storms may howl, and clouds may gather;
All must work for good to me.
Haste then on from grace to glory,
Armed by faith, and winged by prayer;
Heaven's eternal day before thee,
God's own hand shall guide thee there.
Soon shall close thy earthly mission;
Swift shall pass thy pilgrim days;
Hope soon change to glad fruition,
Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.
Public domain hymn text (1825). Words by Henry F. Lyte.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Henry Francis Lyte, an Anglican clergyman best remembered today for writing 'Abide with Me,' composed 'Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken' in 1825, decades before that far more famous hymn, during his ministry in Lower Brixham, a fishing village on the English coast.
Lyte's own health was fragile for most of his adult life, and he served much of his ministry among a poor fishing community, contexts that plausibly shaped the hymn's unusually candid treatment of real material loss, being 'destitute, despised, forsaken,' rather than only abstract spiritual struggle.
The hymn takes Jesus's call to discipleship in passages like Luke 9:23, 'take up thy cross daily, and follow me,' and pushes past the command itself into a frank accounting of what following that call has actually cost the singer in reputation, ambition, and human relationships.
Its central turn, admitting real loss and then insisting 'yet how rich is my condition,' works by contrast rather than denial. The hymn does not claim the losses are not real; it claims they are simply outweighed by what remains, namely, an ongoing relationship with God.
Lyte's second verse extends that honesty further, acknowledging that even close human relationships can prove unreliable, since 'human hearts and looks deceive,' a fairly unsentimental admission for a hymn otherwise concerned with comfort and reassurance.
That directness about disappointment and loss set the hymn apart from many contemporary hymns of assurance, which tended to describe faith's rewards without dwelling as long on what a serious commitment to that faith might actually take from a person first.
The hymn remained in wide use throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, valued particularly for the way it gives voice to believers experiencing real social or relational cost for their faith, rather than assuming discipleship always arrives without any genuine sacrifice.
