I made an exciting discovery some time ago. It seems that Adam-God lives on in the pages of the current LDS hymnal. I write, of course, of that well-loved favorite, \u201cSons of Michael He Approaches,\u201d hymn 51.
\n
\nIt was written by Elias L. T. Harrison who lived from 1830 to 1900 and would have been alive right at the height of the Adam-God teachings during the middle of Brigham Young\u2019s administration. The hymn was first published in 1861 in the Millennial Star<\/i>. It seems that the Millennial Star<\/i> was most active on the Adam-God front between about 1855 and 1857. After about 1860, Adam-God in general died down a bit, since due to opposition Brigham started to counsel against its teaching, although it continued to be taught in less public settings — e.g. the School of the Prophets — much later. Thus, the Adam-God timing for the first publication of “Sons of Michael, He Approaches” is not quite right for the “high” Adam-God period, but it would have been right on the edge. <\/p>\n
While the language of the hymn does not include explicitly those claims that have made Adam-God so controversial down through the years \u2013 Adam is the father of Jesus Christ, Adam is the God of this world, etc. \u2013 there is certainly reason to think that Adam-God teachings, and the interest in the status of Adam and Michael of which those teachings are a part, forms the theological backdrop for this hymn. Certainly, the vision of Adam-Michael as the deified patriarch of the human race and holder of the ultimate priesthood authority of this world is a wonderfully distinctive Mormon image and one that led Brigham on to Adam-God adventures. Included here are the lyrics to \u201cSons of Michael, He Approaches\u201d for the edification of all:<\/p>\n
Sons of Michael, ’tis his chariot Rolls its burning wheels along!
\nRaise aloft your voices million In a torrent pow’r of song.
\nHail our head with music soft! Raise sweet melodies aloft!<\/p>\n
Mother of our generations, Glorious by great Michael’s side,
\nTake thy children’s adoration; Endless with they seed abide.
\nLo! to greet thee now advance Thousands in the glorious dance!<\/p>\n
Raise a chorus, sons of Michael, Like old ocean’s roaring swell,
\nTill the mighty acclamation Thru rebounding space doth tell
\nThat the ancient one doth reign In his Father’s house again!<\/ul>\n
Interestingly, the current hymnal indicates the text has been altered from the original. My curiosity was piqued. As I suspected, the unmodified version of \u201cSons of Michael, He Approaches\u201d is even better than our current version. Here is the unamended text from the 1948 hymnal, hymn 163:<\/p>\n
Sons of Michael, \u2018tis his chariot Rolls its burning wheels along!
\nRaise aloft your voices million In a torrent power of song;
\nHail, hail our Head with music soft! Hail, hail our Head with music soft!
\nRaise week melodies aloft!<\/p>\n
Mother of our generations, Glorious by Great Michael\u2019s side,
\nTake thy children\u2019s adoration; Endless with thy Lord preside;
\nLo, lo, to greet thee now advance, Lo, lo, to greet thee now advance
\nThousands in the glorious dance!<\/p>\n
Raise a chorus, sons of Michael, Like old Ocean\u2019s roaring swell,
\nTill the mighty acclamation Through rebounding space doth tell
\nThat, that the Ancient One doth reign, That, that the Ancient One may reign
\nIn his Paradise again!<\/ul>\n
Some of the changes are boring enough. In 1985 the hymn was set to different music, and the repetitions in the third line of each verse were eliminated to accommodate the new music. In addition, in the 1985 version \u201cFather\u201d (applied to Adam\/Michael), \u201cHead,\u201d and \u201cAncient One\u201d are no longer capitalized. I would write this off as an irrelevant typographical change, except that The Story of Our Latter-day Hymns<\/i> explicitly states that the shift in capitalization was part of an effort to more correctly define Adam\u2019s eternal role. We don\u2019t want people to get any ideas of divinization from the capitalization.<\/p>\n
The real fun changes, however come in the third and fourth verses. The 1985 version says that Eve is to \u201cendless with thy seed reside,\u201d while in the 1948 version she is to \u201cendless with they Lord preside.\u201d So we have here two shifts. First, Eve no longer \u201cpresides,\u201d and second, Adam is no longer her \u201cLord.\u201d It seems that we have three different stories that can be told about this change. First, we can say that Eve\u2019s eternal authority is being down-shifted from presiding to residing. Second, we can say that Eve\u2019s eternal position is being bettered in that Adam is no longer her \u201cLord.\u201d Third, we can say that Adam\u2019s eternal position is being down-shifted in that we are no longer referring to him as \u201cLord.\u201d<\/p>\n
The shift in the fourth verse is striking. In the 1985 version the ancient one once more preside\u2019s in \u201chis Father\u2019s house.\u201d This obviously has the effect of emphasizing Adam\u2019s subservient status to his father. He is not the \u201cour Lord and our God and the only one with whom we have to deal\u201d (to use BY\u2019s phrase) in this formulation. However, in the 1948 version there is no mention at all of Adam\u2019s father. Rather, he returns to his Paradise to reign again. Thus we have the vision of Adam\/Michael returning to the paradisiacal glory from which he decended (coming from another world with one of his wives, as BY taught?) as Lord and Head surrounded by the posterity who \u201chave to do\u201d with him.<\/p>\n
In short, this is a truly great hymn; a hidden treasure of Mormon wierdness (in the best possible sense).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I made an exciting discovery some time ago. It seems that Adam-God lives on in the pages of the current LDS hymnal. I write, of course, of that well-loved favorite, \u201cSons of Michael He Approaches,\u201d hymn 51.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-and-poetry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}