Marching to Zion Meaning, History, and Theology
"Come, we that love the Lord"
- Written
- 1707
- Category
- Hymn
- Tune
- Standard Tune
- Status
- Published
- Rights
- Public domain
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Story
“Marching to Zion” is the familiar gospel-song form of Isaac Watts’s 1707 hymn “Come, We That Love the Lord.” Robert Lowry later supplied the refrain and tune MARCHING TO ZION, first securely located in print in 1869, giving Watts’s hymn a new expression of joyful Christian pilgrimage and hope.
Overview
“Marching to Zion” is the familiar gospel-song form of Isaac Watts’s 1707 hymn “Come, We That Love the Lord.” Its central movement is from present worship toward promised joy: believers sing together now because their life with God already anticipates the fuller fellowship Scripture associates with Zion and the heavenly Jerusalem.
The hymn does not portray Christian pilgrimage as grim endurance. Watts’s original heading, “Heavenly Joy on Earth,” is a key to its meaning. Future hope is meant to generate present praise, so worship becomes a foretaste of the joy toward which the church is moving.
Robert Lowry’s nineteenth-century adaptation made that movement even more explicit by adding a refrain and a new tune shaped for vigorous congregational participation. The result joins eighteenth-century English Dissenting hymnody with American gospel song and remains useful for services centered on joy, pilgrimage, the church, eternal life, and Christian hope.
Historical Background
The hymn now commonly called “Marching to Zion” began more than 160 years before Robert Lowry’s familiar tune existed. Isaac Watts first published “Come, We That Love the Lord” in the first edition of “Hymns and Spiritual Songs” in 1707. It appeared in ten short-meter stanzas without music under the heading “Heavenly Joy on Earth.” Watts revised portions of stanzas eight and ten for the second edition in 1709, showing that even his own authorized text was not completely static.
The original hymn moves between present congregational joy and the hope of heavenly worship. Watts argues that Christian faith does not abolish joy but redirects and deepens it. The later stanzas develop Zion as an image of the believer’s promised fellowship with God, while the closing movement turns that hope into encouragement for the journey. This helps explain why the hymn has served both as a call to worship and as a song of pilgrimage.
The text also changed through denominational transmission. John Wesley adapted it for his 1737 “Collection of Psalms and Hymns,” omitting two of Watts’s stanzas and changing the opening from first-person plural to second-person plural. A related form appeared in Wesley’s 1780 Methodist collection and influenced later Methodist hymnals. Another old alteration replaced Watts’s description of the heavenly King’s “favorites” with “children,” a reading documented by the 1750s and 1760s. Modern hymnals therefore often print selected or altered stanzas rather than all ten from 1707.
Before Lowry, the hymn was sung to many tunes. One important alternative is ST. THOMAS, derived from Aaron Williams’s longer tune HOLBORN, first published in the 1760s. The shortened tune was in circulation by about 1769–1770, and its pairing with Watts’s hymn appears to have been established by John Cole’s “The Beauties of Psalmody” in 1805. ST. THOMAS remains a significant alternative in hymnals that preserve Watts’s text in a more traditional short-meter form.
Robert Lowry transformed the hymn into the gospel-song form now known as “Marching to Zion.” Hymnary commonly dates his tune to 1867, but detailed source work by Hymnology Archive finds no appearance in the often-cited “Silver Spray” of 1868 and identifies the earliest securely located printing in “The Victory,” edited by Chester G. Allen and William F. Sherwin and published by Biglow & Main in 1869. Lowry’s four-part arrangement placed the melody in the second voice, a common nineteenth-century practice, and he supplied a refrain whose ideas were drawn from Watts’s final two stanzas.
The combination of Lowry’s refrain and tune gave the hymn a second musical life in Sunday schools, gospel-song collections, revival-oriented books, and later denominational hymnals. Hymnary indexes Watts’s text in well over a thousand hymnals and Lowry’s tune in hundreds of collections. Both the eighteenth-century Watts text and Lowry’s nineteenth-century contribution are public domain, although modern harmonizations, arrangements, translations, and editorial revisions may carry separate rights.
Biblical Foundations
Hebrews 12:22-24 provides the clearest New Testament interpretation of Zion for the hymn. Zion is not merely a geographical hill in Jerusalem; the passage speaks of the city of the living God and the heavenly Jerusalem, where worship centers on God, the gathered people of heaven, and Jesus the mediator of the new covenant.
Psalm 84:5-7 gives biblical depth to the hymn’s pilgrimage imagery. Those whose strength is in God set their hearts on pilgrimage, pass through a valley of weeping, and continue from strength to strength until they appear before God in Zion. The journey is therefore sustained by God rather than by uninterrupted ease.
Psalm 149:2 connects Zion with rejoicing in the King, supporting Watts’s insistence that those who belong to God have reason for present praise. Isaiah 35:10 joins pilgrimage and eschatological joy even more directly: the ransomed return to Zion with singing as sorrow and sighing flee away.
Revelation 21:2-4 extends the imagery to the New Jerusalem and the final dwelling of God with his people. This keeps the hymn’s hope from becoming merely an escape to a distant heaven; the biblical goal is communion with God, the end of death and mourning, and the fulfillment of redemption.
Verse Explanation
Watts’s original ten-stanza hymn develops a broad movement rather than a simple verse-by-verse travel narrative. It begins by calling believers to express their joy in worship, challenges the assumption that religion is opposed to true delight, and then turns increasingly toward the hope symbolized by Zion and heavenly fellowship.
The later part of the hymn allows future hope to strengthen present life. The destination does not erase the hardships of the journey, but it gives believers reason to sing before the journey is complete. Lowry’s nineteenth-century refrain gathers imagery from Watts’s final stanzas and makes that forward-looking movement the repeated center of the gospel-song version.
Because modern hymnals usually select only several of Watts’s original ten stanzas, the precise sequence varies from book to book. The consistent theological arc is from joyful worship in the present toward confident hope in God’s promised city.
Theological Reflection
The hymn holds present worship and future hope together. Watts’s title “Heavenly Joy on Earth” suggests that Christian joy is not postponed until the life to come. Congregational praise already participates, in an incomplete way, in the worship toward which God’s people are moving.
Its theology of pilgrimage is communal. The Christian journey is sung in the plural, so discipleship is not imagined as a solitary climb toward heaven. The church travels, sings, encourages, and hopes together. Lowry’s refrain intensifies that corporate character by giving the congregation a recurring shared response.
Zion also functions on several biblical levels. It recalls Jerusalem and the worship of Israel, but Hebrews 12 interprets Zion in relation to the heavenly Jerusalem and the new covenant in Jesus. Revelation 21 broadens the hope further toward God’s final dwelling with redeemed humanity.
The hymn therefore offers an eschatology of joy rather than escapism. Future hope is meant to strengthen present faithfulness and worship. The promise of God’s city does not make present valleys unreal; Psalm 84 shows that pilgrimage may pass through weeping even as God sustains the travelers toward their destination.
Church Impact
Watts’s text has had a long life independent of Lowry’s tune. Hymnary indexes “Come, We That Love the Lord” in well over a thousand hymnals, with settings ranging from traditional short-meter tunes to later gospel arrangements. The text has appeared in Congregational, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Reformed, Lutheran, evangelical, African American, Mennonite, and ecumenical collections.
Lowry’s MARCHING TO ZION became especially prominent in American gospel-song and Sunday-school traditions and is itself indexed in hundreds of hymnals. Its refrain gave editors a concise title by which the adapted hymn became widely recognized and helped make the text suitable for participatory revival and congregational singing.
The hymn’s transmission also shows how denominational editors reshape inherited material. Wesley’s eighteenth-century alterations, Lowry’s nineteenth-century refrain and tune, and the selective stanza choices of modern hymnals all produced recognizable but not identical versions of Watts’s work.
Its continuing worship value lies in the union of joy, pilgrimage, and hope. Churches use it as a gathering hymn, a song about the church’s journey, and an expression of eternal hope, while its history provides a useful example of how an eighteenth-century English hymn could be reinterpreted through nineteenth-century American gospel music.
Musical Notes
Watts wrote his 1707 text in short meter, 6.6.8.6, and supplied no tune. The hymn consequently circulated with many melodies. ST. THOMAS, derived from Aaron Williams’s longer HOLBORN, became one durable setting; its association with Watts’s text can be traced to an American collection published in 1805.
The tune now most closely associated with the title “Marching to Zion” is Robert Lowry’s MARCHING TO ZION. Hymnary gives the tune as 6.6.8.6 with refrain and commonly prints it in F or G major. Although many indexes assign a composition date of 1867, the earliest securely located publication is “The Victory” of 1869. That source printed the music in four parts with the melody in the second voice.
Lowry did more than provide a melody. He reshaped the short-meter hymn into an extended gospel-song form and created a refrain derived from Watts’s closing imagery. This distinction matters historically: the stanzas originate with Watts, while the familiar refrain and tune belong to Lowry’s nineteenth-century adaptation.
The tune’s clear periodic structure and recurring refrain support strong congregational participation. Modern hymnals often move the melody to the soprano and adjust harmony or rhythm, so later printed settings should not be assumed to reproduce Lowry’s 1869 arrangement exactly.
Application
- Use the hymn as a call to worship when the congregation needs to remember that Christian praise is both a present act and a foretaste of future fellowship with God.
- Pair it with Hebrews 12:22-24 to explain how the New Testament expands the biblical meaning of Zion beyond a geographical location.
- Use Psalm 84:5-7 in seasons of grief or difficulty to show that pilgrimage toward God can pass through a valley of weeping without losing its destination.
- Emphasize the hymn’s plural voice by connecting congregational singing with mutual encouragement, shared perseverance, and care for fellow travelers.
- When selecting music, distinguish Lowry’s MARCHING TO ZION from older alternatives such as ST. THOMAS, and check the rights of any modern arrangement even though the underlying text and tune are public domain.
Discussion Questions
- How does Watts’s original heading “Heavenly Joy on Earth” change the way you understand the hymn’s focus on Zion?
- What does Hebrews 12:22-24 mean when it describes believers as having come to Mount Zion and the heavenly Jerusalem?
- How does Psalm 84 hold together pilgrimage, hardship, and the hope of appearing before God in Zion?
- What changes when a congregation sings Watts’s text with Lowry’s gospel refrain rather than with a traditional short-meter tune such as ST. THOMAS?
- What does the hymn’s textual and musical history teach us about the way hymnals adapt older material for new worship settings?
Teaching Tips
- Build a simple timeline: Watts’s first edition in 1707, his revisions in 1709, Wesley’s adaptation in 1737, the ST. THOMAS pairing by 1805, and Lowry’s securely documented MARCHING TO ZION setting in “The Victory” in 1869.
- Explain that “Marching to Zion” is a later title for the gospel-song adaptation of Watts’s “Come, We That Love the Lord,” not the original 1707 title.
- Use Hebrews 12, Psalm 84, and Isaiah 35 to distinguish the biblical idea of Zion from a vague synonym for heaven.
- Compare a setting with ST. THOMAS and one with MARCHING TO ZION to demonstrate how tune and refrain can change the perceived character of the same hymn text.
- Point out that Lowry wrote the familiar refrain as an adaptation of ideas already present in Watts’s closing stanzas, so both contributors shaped the form commonly sung today.
Sources
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Isaac Watts, “Hymns and Spiritual Songs,” first edition, London, 1707, Book II, “Heavenly Joy on Earth,” first publication of “Come, We That Love the Lord.”
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Isaac Watts, “Hymns and Spiritual Songs,” second edition, 1709, containing Watts’s revisions to stanzas eight and ten.
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John Wesley, “A Collection of Psalms and Hymns,” Charlestown, 1737, early Methodist adaptation of Watts’s text.
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John Wesley, “A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists,” 1780, later transmission of Wesley’s altered form.
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“The Victory,” Chester G. Allen and William F. Sherwin, editors, New York: Biglow & Main, 1869, earliest securely located publication of Robert Lowry’s MARCHING TO ZION setting and refrain.
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Hymnology Archive, Chris Fenner, “Come, we that love the Lord,” revised 2022, detailed study of the 1707 and 1709 texts, Wesley revisions, Lowry’s refrain, and tune history.
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Hymnary.org, text authority page for “Come, we that love the Lord,” including Isaac Watts attribution, 1707 date, public-domain status, tune associations, and hymnal circulation.
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Hymnary.org, tune authority page for MARCHING TO ZION by Robert Lowry, including meter, common keys, public-domain status, and hymnal instances.
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Hymnary.org, person authority pages for Isaac Watts and Robert Lowry.
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David W. Music, “Come, we that love the Lord,” in “Repeat the Sounding Joy: Reflections on Hymns by Isaac Watts,” Mercer University Press, 2020.
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Carlton R. Young, “Companion to The United Methodist Hymnal,” Abingdon Press, 1993, notes on “Come, we that love the Lord.”
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World English Bible, public domain Scripture text from eBible.org.
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