BENEATH THE CROSS

This crucifixion hymn by Elizabeth Clephane (1830–1869) was first published posthumously in The Family Treasury (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1872), edited by Rev. William Arnot. In this collection, “Beneath the cross of Jesus” was given as the first of two hymns, both in five stanzas of eight lines, without music, unattributed. The second text, beginning “Dim eyes for ever closed” is best regarded as a separate hymn, not a continuation of the first, because it has a different subject matter and a slightly different meter. Although Arnot did not name the author of these, he described the texts as written by “a young Christian lately released . . . one whom the Good Shepherd led through the wilderness into rest.” In later editions of this series, starting in 1873, the poems were more clearly credited to Clephane. According to J.R. Watson, the title “Breathings on the Border” likely refers to “the fact that Clephane had lived at Melrose, Roxburghshire, in the Scottish Border country.” In the opening stanza, the writer pictures the cross as a shelter from desolation, and she calls upon a series of metaphors to paint the image: standing beneath the cross is like standing in the shadow of a mighty rock; it is a home in the wilderness and a resting place from the sweat of labor. A strong biblical association can be found in Isaiah 32:2 (“Each will be like a hiding place from the wind, a shelter from the storm, like streams of water in a dry place, like the shade of a great rock in a weary land,” ESV). This metaphor continues into the second stanza, where the worshiper finds the unusual description of the cross as a “trysting place where heaven’s love / and heaven’s justice meet.” Hymnologist Esther Crookshank viewed this as a literary nod to the Psalms: The Psalms evoke the expanse between earth and heaven as a synonym for the vastest space imaginable (Ps. 103:11) and as a way to visualize the chasm between God’s justice and his hesed, his unfailing covenant kindness. Psalm 85:10 foretells the ultimate uniting of God’s justice with his mercy in the picture of His righteousness and peace kissing each other. Clephane’s phrase “trysting-place where heaven’s love and heaven’s justice meet,” echoing the Psalmic reference to the kiss, paraphrases the Psalm in exalted language that seems closer to Watts or Wesley than to that of her own gospel tradition.  Crookshank saw the connection between the cross and Jacob’s ladder (Genesis 28) as a solution to the perceived separation of heaven and earth, “the fulfillment of a dream that to the patriarch was theophany but to future generations could be understood as prophecy—as the path, stair, or bridge leading to heaven.” Albert Edward Bailey likewise made this connection: The cross is God’s solution of an insoluble problem: how can justice that demands punishment be reconciled with love that demands forgiveness? That reconciliation makes possible a pathway to heaven—as in Jacob’s dream. The third stanza changes focus to describe a large open grave near the cross, but between the writer and the grave, the cross (and presumably its divine martyr) stands guard to prevent entry into the eternal grave. Bailey saw not just one shadow in the hymn, but two: “one cast by the cross to protect the pilgrim from heat, the other lying beyond the cross, the shadow of death—not alone the death of the body but the ‘awful’ death of the soul. The cross is both warning and rescue.” The fourth stanza shifts its gaze back to that divine martyr and to an act of substitutionary atonement (“Who suffered there for me”). This elicits a deeply personal response from the writer, much like the venerable hymn by Isaac Watts, “Alas! and did my Saviour bleed”