How Great the Wisdom and the Love
195

Text: Eliza R. Snow (1804–1887; LDS)
Music: Thomas McIntyre (1833–1914; LDS)
Tune name: MORMON

This beautiful sacrament hymn has a distinctly Latter- day Saint emphasis in the way it presents the Atonement. The first and sixth verses place the Savior’s sacrifice in the context of a great plan established from the foundations of the earth. Our vision of the Atonement, our sense of its significance, grows more complete as we sing of the eternal plan of which this event was a part.

Of all the hymn texts by Eliza R. Snow, “How Great the Wisdom and the Love” may be the most often sung. In dignified and memorable phrases, the hymn tells the story of the sacrificial offering of Jesus Christ. Because of the exceptional beauty of this text, all six verses were retained in the 1985 hymnbook.

The hymn opens with a reference to Christ’s ordination in the premortal life as the one who would redeem mankind from sin. Verses two and three then tell of his earthly mission, referring to the blood of his sacrifice and to his triumph through “strict obedience” to the will of his Father. Jesus was the first who “marked the path and led the way” toward the vision of the promised resurrection, as unfolded in verse four. Verses five and six (now in reverse order from the way they were printed in the 1950 hymn-book, because the original verse five is actually a more satisfying conclusion) highlight the meaning of Christ’s mission in our own lives.

It is possible that Eliza R. Snow derived the suggestion for this hymn’s opening line from an 1817 hymn by Benjamin Beddome, beginning “How great the wisdom, power, and grace,” but no other lines are similar. Eliza R. Snow’s text first appeared in Sacred Hymns and Spiritual Songs in 1871. The tune, MORMON, first appeared with this text in the Juvenile Instructor in January 1879.