Ask Ye What Great Thing I Know: Meaning, History, and Theology
"Ask ye what great thing I know"
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Story
Ask Ye What Great Thing I Know is Benjamin Hall Kennedy's 1863 translation of a German hymn by Johann Christoph Schwedler. Commonly sung to César Malan's HENDON, it confesses Jesus Christ crucified as the believer's wisdom, peace, assurance, and hope.
Overview
Ask Ye What Great Thing I Know is a hymn of Christian testimony in which repeated questions are answered by directing every ground of confidence toward Jesus Christ crucified. Knowledge here is not mere religious information. It is personal recognition of Christ as the believer's glory, peace, wisdom, consolation, life, and final hope.
The hymn's movement is both catechetical and devotional. Each stanza examines another human need or aspiration, yet the recurring answer prevents faith from fragmenting into unrelated benefits. Forgiveness, guidance, endurance, resurrection, and assurance remain gifts found in the same Savior and interpreted through his cross.
In worship, the song can serve as a confession after preaching, a hymn for Lent or Holy Week, an Easter testimony, or a teaching song on the person and work of Christ. Its confident language is especially useful when paired with pastoral acknowledgement that Christian assurance does not eliminate sorrow or conflict; it locates their ultimate answer in the crucified and risen Lord.
Historical Background
The hymn began in the ministry of Johann Christoph Schwedler, a Lutheran pastor who served Niederwiese in Silesia from the end of the seventeenth century until his death in 1730. Schwedler had already written hundreds of hymns by 1716, when he issued Die Lieder Mose und des Lammes. Wollt ihr wissen, was mein Preis? does not appear in that collection, so the available evidence places its composition after 1716 and before 1730. No contemporary account identifies a particular sermon, crisis, or personal event as its occasion.
The earliest located publication is posthumous: the Hirschberger Gesangbuch of 1741. The German text was constructed as a sequence of questions answered by a recurring confession of Jesus the Crucified. It circulated with a German melody now indexed as REIMANN, associated with Johann Balthasar Reimann and dated 1747. That original-language tune history is separate from HENDON, the melody most English-speaking congregations now know.
Benjamin Hall Kennedy brought the hymn into English in Hymnologia Christiana, or Psalms and Hymns Selected and Arranged in the Order of the Christian Seasons, published by Longman in 1863. His version appeared as no. 620. John Julian's hymnological account describes Kennedy's first five stanzas as translations of the first five German stanzas and the sixth as suggested by the German conclusion. The result is therefore a translation with some shaping at its close, not an entirely original English hymn. Later hymnals commonly omit one or two stanzas and sometimes modernize the opening address from ye to me.
Kennedy was not the only English translator. James Mearns produced the more literal Do You Ask What Most I Prize? for the 1886 Moravian Hymn Book, omitting the German conclusion, and Herman H. Brueckner later supplied Would You Know My Greatest Prize? for the Wartburg Hymnal in 1918. Kennedy's wording nevertheless achieved the widest English-language circulation and is the version represented by this record.
HENDON was composed independently by the Genevan Réveil minister César Malan and is generally dated about 1827, decades before Kennedy's translation. The tune was part of the body of texts and melodies Malan issued in successive editions of Chants de Sion. Lowell Mason carried it into North American psalmody and published his harmonized form in Carmina Sacra in 1841. Because the melody has five phrases, it naturally fits Kennedy's five-line stanzas; the association, however, is a later editorial pairing rather than an original text-and-tune collaboration. Other tunes have occasionally been used, including REDHEAD 76 in a recent hymnal and REIMANN for the German text.
Hymnal indexes document the Kennedy-HENDON pairing across Methodist, Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, evangelical, and ecumenical collections. Editors have placed it under Christ's passion, salvation, assurance, testimony, Easter, and faith. Such appearances demonstrate sustained publication across traditions, though they do not by themselves prove how often individual congregations sing it. Schwedler's German text, Kennedy's 1863 translation, Malan's tune, and Mason's 1841 harmonization are all public domain; modern revisions and arrangements require separate evaluation.
Biblical Foundations
First Corinthians 2:2 provides the hymn's governing biblical sentence. Paul's resolve to know Jesus Christ crucified does not reject all learning; it places the cross at the center from which Christian wisdom, preaching, and identity must be understood. The hymn turns that apostolic concentration into a sequence of congregational questions and answers.
Galatians 6:14 explains the hymn's language of glory. The cross overturns ordinary measures of status and achievement, so Christian boasting is redirected from the self to the saving action of the Lord Jesus. Philippians 3:7–10 makes the same revaluation personal: every former gain becomes loss beside knowing Christ, receiving righteousness through faith, sharing his sufferings, and knowing resurrection power.
Colossians 2:2–3 guards the song from anti-intellectualism. Christ is not an alternative to wisdom and knowledge but the one in whom their treasures are hidden. Romans 8:38–39 supplies the hymn's assurance amid conflict, sorrow, life, and death. The love of God in Christ remains secure against every created power, so the repeated confession can be sung as tested hope rather than shallow optimism.
Verse Explanation
The opening establishes the hymn's governing question: what deserves the believer's deepest delight, reward, and praise? The answer identifies Christ through his crucifixion, setting the pattern for everything that follows.
The next movement addresses the foundation of faith and reconciliation with God. Later stanzas extend Christ's sufficiency into moral discernment, spiritual conflict, sorrow, and inward renewal. The hymn thereby moves from objective saving work to the daily consequences of belonging to the Savior.
Its final movements look toward life beyond death and gather the preceding answers into a summary confession of faith. Modern hymnals often shorten Kennedy's six-stanza version, so the exact progression varies by edition; some omit the stanza on discernment or another internal stanza while retaining the opening and conclusion.
Theological Reflection
The hymn is radically Christocentric. It gathers salvation, truth, peace, guidance, consolation, and hope into the person of Jesus rather than treating them as spiritual possessions detached from him. To know Christ is therefore relational and covenantal: the believer trusts, confesses, follows, and hopes in the one revealed through crucifixion and resurrection.
Its repeated designation of Christ by the cross foregrounds atonement. The Savior bears sin and reconciles the believer to God; assurance rests in an accomplished divine act rather than moral achievement. Yet the cross is not presented as defeat. The hymn's later movement toward victory, resurrection, and the gathered people of light interprets crucifixion within the larger paschal mystery.
The song also joins justification with discipleship. Righteous standing before God is received through Christ, while practical wisdom and faithful action flow from belonging to him. Knowledge that never reshapes duty would fall short of the hymn's purpose. Its catechetical pattern trains desire as well as memory, teaching worshipers what deserves their highest praise and allegiance.
Finally, its assurance is eschatological without becoming escapist. Christ meets present foes and sorrow, but hope reaches beyond immediate relief toward resurrection and communion with the redeemed. Christian confidence is not confidence that suffering will be avoided; it is confidence that neither suffering nor death can sever believers from God's love in Christ.
Church Impact
Hymnary documents the English text in more than one hundred hymnals, with appearances across Methodist, Presbyterian, Reformed, Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, evangelical, and ecumenical traditions. Modern examples include The United Methodist Hymnal, The Covenant Hymnal, The A.M.E. Zion Hymnal, The Celebration Hymnal, and Our Great Redeemer's Praise. This breadth shows durable editorial reception rather than a song confined to Schwedler's Lutheran or Kennedy's Anglican setting.
Hymnal classifications reveal the uses editors envisioned: Christ's passion, Lent, Easter, salvation, assurance, testimony, faith, and praise of Christ. The question-and-answer design also makes the hymn suitable for catechesis, confirmation, doctrinal preaching, and congregational testimony. Its usefulness lies in combining memorable form with a concentrated statement of Christ's saving work.
The original German text has continued separately and has also generated Polish, Swahili, and other translated forms indexed by hymnological sources. English-language editors have likewise revised pronouns, selected different stanzas, or paired the text with another melody. Worship leaders should therefore identify the actual text and tune in their hymnal instead of assuming every printing preserves Kennedy's complete 1863 form.
Musical Notes
HENDON was composed by Henri Abraham César Malan and is generally dated about 1827. Hymnary catalogs it in F major, with the incipit 11151 35433 33242 and the meter 7.7.7.7.7. Lowell Mason published a harmonized form in Carmina Sacra in 1841, helping transmit the tune in North America well before Kennedy's English translation appeared.
The tune's five compact phrases correspond naturally to the five lines of each English stanza. Repeated tones and predominantly direct motion give the questions clarity, while the closing phrase provides a firm musical answer. Some hymnals print the melody in G major or other keys; these are transpositions rather than different tunes.
A moderate, steady tempo allows each question to register without making the sequence ponderous. Singers should articulate the repeated notes cleanly, shape the first two phrases as one larger unit, and let the final phrase carry appropriate weight without an exaggerated slowdown. Because full six-stanza use can feel extended, antiphonal singing or a lighter unaccompanied stanza can provide variety. Modern descants, organ settings, and reharmonizations may be copyrighted even though the historic melody and Mason harmonization are public domain.
Application
- Before naming what you know about Christianity, identify what you are actually relying on for worth, forgiveness, wisdom, and hope; compare each answer with the centrality of Christ in 1 Corinthians 2:2.
- When speaking about accomplishment, practice the cross-shaped boasting of Galatians 6:14 by naming God's grace more clearly than your status, knowledge, or religious performance.
- Bring a present guilt or failure to Christ in confession, then ground assurance in his reconciling work rather than repeatedly testing whether your emotions feel strong enough.
- When facing a difficult decision, seek wisdom through Scripture, prayer, mature counsel, and obedient action; Christ-centered faith should clarify duty rather than replace discernment.
- Use Romans 8:38–39 when accompanying someone in grief, but do not promise immediate relief; emphasize the inseparable love of God that endures through suffering and death.
- Before reproducing the hymn, distinguish the public-domain text and tune from any recent revision, translation, harmonization, accompaniment, or recording.
Discussion Questions
- How does 1 Corinthians 2:2 make the cross the organizing center of Christian knowledge rather than an excuse to reject learning?
- What forms of achievement or religious status compete with the cross as grounds for boasting?
- Why does the hymn answer several different needs with the same person instead of listing unrelated spiritual benefits?
- How do crucifixion and resurrection belong together in the hymn's account of assurance?
- What is gained or lost when a hymnal abridges Kennedy's six-stanza translation?
- How can a congregation confess strong assurance while remaining honest about sorrow, doubt, and unresolved suffering?
Teaching Tips
- Read 1 Corinthians 2:2, Galatians 6:14, and Philippians 3:7–10 before singing, asking participants to identify what Paul knows, values, and boasts in.
- Explain the three-stage history clearly: Schwedler's German text was published posthumously in 1741, Kennedy translated it in 1863, and Malan's earlier tune HENDON was paired with the English text later.
- Compare the congregation's hymnal with Kennedy's six-stanza structure and identify omissions without reproducing the full text in teaching materials.
- Use the recurring questions catechetically: invite learners to supply contemporary false answers such as status, productivity, influence, or certainty before examining the hymn's Christ-centered response.
- Teach HENDON in five short phrases, grouping the first two together and giving the closing phrase a unified, confident cadence.
- Pair strong testimony with pastoral honesty by acknowledging that Christ's consolation may sustain believers through grief without removing every present wound.
Sources
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Hirschberger Gesangbuch — Posthumous publication of Wollt ihr wissen, was mein Preis?, Hirschberg, 1741
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Hymnary.org — Text authority for Ask Ye What Great Thing I Know
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Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology — Ask ye what great thing I know
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Kennedy, Benjamin Hall — Hymnologia Christiana, no. 620, 1863
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Hymnary.org — Johann Christoph Schwedler person authority, including John Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology account
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Deutsche Biographie — Johann Christoph Schwedler
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Dictionary of National Biography — Benjamin Hall Kennedy
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Hymnary.org — Benjamin Hall Kennedy person authority
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Hymnary.org — Tune authority for HENDON by César Malan
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Hymnology Archive — Henri Abraham César Malan biography and collections
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Malan, César — Chants de Sion publication record
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Hymnary.org — The United Methodist Hymnal, hymn 163
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eBible.org — World English Bible Classic
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