Skip to content ↓

Hymn Stories: The Church’s One Foundation (+ Free Download)

Songs are a powerful means of teaching. The melodies, rhythms, and rhymes that characterize songs make the words easier to remember. The best and most effective songs combine lyrics and music to cultivate feelings that complement the meaning.

All throughout history God’s people have used songs to teach. We can see this as early as Exodus 15 where Moses records the song Israel sang after crossing the Red Sea. It taught everyone who heard and sang it about God’s character in that great act of delivering his people. In the New Testament we encounter simple but important truths in the earliest Christian hymns.

The Rev. Samuel John Stone was well aware of the effectiveness of singing when he wrote and published Lyra Fidelium in 1866. As a curate in the small town of Windsor, England, he was aware of his parishoners’ habit of using the Apostles’ Creed in their private prayers. But he was concerned that many of them did not grasp the meaning of what they said. The prose felt too academic, disconnected from the average worshipper, and lacking a devotional spirit.

It was in this context that he wrote Lyra Fidelium, which consisted of twelve hymns, one for each article of the Apostles’ Creed. With each hymn he included a short “summary of truths confessed” in that article, along with a list of the Scripture passages supporting it. “The Church’s One Foundation” was the hymn he wrote for article 9 of the Creed, which affirms belief in “the holy catholic church” and “the communion of saints.”

“The Church’s One Foundation” is the best known of the twelve hymns in this collection. Louis Benson quotes one English archbishop as saying that “wherever he was called upon to open or dedicate a church, he could always count on two things—cold chicken and ‘The Church’s one Foundation’.”

The hymn’s long legacy undoubtedly owes to the many sweet doctrines it includes, its use of the words and concepts of Scripture to express them, and its uniqueness in teaching the doctrine of the church. Benson describes it as embodying “practically every doctrince concerning the church [Stone] held most dear (its divine origin, its unbroken continuity, its catholicity and essential unity, its orthodoxy, its sacramental grace, its communion with God and with the departed saints, its militancy and final triumph).”

The Church’s one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord,
She is His new creation
By water and the Word.
From heaven He came and sought her
To be His holy bride;
With His own blood He bought her
And for her life He died.

She is from every nation,
Yet one o’er all the earth;
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With every grace endued.

The Church shall never perish!
Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish,
Is with her to the end:
Though there be those who hate her,
And false sons in her pale,
Against both foe or traitor
She ever shall prevail.

Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed:
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song!

’Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace forevermore;
Till, with the vision glorious,
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won,
With all her sons and daughters
Who, by the Master’s hand
Led through the deathly waters,
Repose in Eden land.

O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we
Like them, the meek and lowly,
On high may dwell with Thee:
There, past the border mountains,
Where in sweet vales the Bride
With Thee by living fountains
Forever shall abide!

Indelible Grace has a recording of the song set to a new melody and they are offering it to you for free. You can visit NoiseTrade to get it. There is the option there to leave a tip, but feel completely freedom to take the song for free.


  • Carney Trump

    How Donald Trump Upended Canadian Politics and Helped the Liberals Win

    On April 28, Canadians elected the Liberal Party of Canada to a fourth consecutive term. This is a rare feat for a political party in Canada and in this case, one of special significance, for just months ago, the Liberals seemed destined for near-complete destruction. The cost of living was spiking, the quality of life…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (April 30)

    A La Carte: Young men wanted / The glory and danger of apologetics / God’s guidelines for sex aren’t arbitrary / How much is our church worth? / People loved the darkness / and more.

  • Erics Greatest Race

    Releasing Today: Eric’s Greatest Race

    My new book releases today! Eric’s Greatest Race is a fully illustrated graphic novel that tells young readers the story of Eric Liddell, the famous Olympian whose steadfast courage and commitment to Christ has inspired generations of believers. It is my sincere hope that it will introduce a whole new generation to a man whose…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (April 29)

    A La Carte: Has the decline of U.S. Christianity finally stopped? / Holding space for joy and sorrow / No one ever hated his own body / Wisdom principles for Christian parenting / The article you don’t want to read / A new book / Kindle deals / and more.

  • The Pursuit of Virtue

    God’s character is the essence of virtue. The heart of virtue is to know the Lord and to become like him, as a child resembles her father. That is the goal, privilege, and destiny of the redeemed. #Sponsored

  • When God Plants an Acorn

    When God Plants an Acorn, He Means an Oak

    We stood together on the crest of a hill, a gentle breeze rustling the meadow around our feet. The fields ran gently downward until they met a creek that gurgled happily in its course. A few years prior, an acorn had somehow made its way to the highest point of this hill, carelessly dropped there…