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Sunday, September 20, 2026

by Joshua L. Mazur, Director of Music

Hymn 423: Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise

The opening words of Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise come almost directly from Scripture. In 1 Timothy 1:17, St. Paul writes:

“Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever.”

The hymn was written in 1867 by the Scottish minister and poet Walter Chalmers Smith. Smith served congregations of the Free Church of Scotland and eventually became Moderator of its General Assembly in 1893. He was a prolific poet, although this is the one hymn for which he is chiefly remembered today. His original text contained six stanzas; the four-stanza form familiar to most congregations came through later editing and was established in The English Hymnal of 1906.

Smith's hymn is full of biblical language. God is “immortal” and “invisible.” He is the “Ancient of Days.” He dwells in “light inaccessible.” He neither wants nor wastes. He gives life to all things while remaining Himself unchanged.

That last contrast produces one of the hymn's finest stanzas:

To all, life thou givest, to both great and small;

in all life thou livest, the true life of all;

we blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,

and wither and perish, but naught changeth thee.

We live in time. We grow older. Things begin and end. Generations come and go. God does not.

Smith is trying to say something about God that Christian theology has always found difficult to put into words. God is not simply a much greater version of us. He is the source of everything that exists. We know Him because He has revealed Himself to us, and yet He remains greater than our ability to comprehend Him.

That is why the hymn can call God both invisible and the “true life of all.” His invisibility does not mean His absence.

ST. DENIO

As we have seen with several hymns in this series, Smith did not write his text for the tune we now associate with it.

ST. DENIO is Welsh and considerably older than Smith's hymn. It is based on a traditional Welsh melody and appeared as a hymn tune in John Roberts's Caniadau y Cyssegr in 1839. Smith's words and ST. DENIO were brought together in The English Hymnal of 1906, nearly forty years after the text was written.

The meter is 11.11.11.11, meaning that each line contains eleven syllables. Those long lines require a tune with plenty of room, and ST. DENIO supplies it.

It is also an interesting match for the text. Smith's words could easily become ponderous. They deal with eternity, transcendence, divine wisdom, creation, and the mystery of God. ST. DENIO gives all of that theology considerable energy. The melody keeps moving, and the repeated rhythmic figures make it easy for a congregation to sing with confidence.

The result is a hymn about the mystery of God that does not sound mysterious or hesitant. It sounds like praise.

“The Lord Is Gracious and Merciful”

This Sunday's lessons give us several opportunities to hear Smith's hymn differently.

In Exodus, Israel complains in the wilderness that there is nothing to eat. God responds by giving them manna. In the Gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, in which those hired at the end of the day receive the same wage as those who have worked since morning. Both stories cause trouble because God's generosity does not operate according to ordinary human calculations. The Israelites receive what they have not provided for themselves. The laborers who worked only an hour receive what they could not reasonably have expected. In both cases, the gift originates in the character of the giver.

That is very close to the world of this hymn. Smith describes God as the one who gives life “to both great and small,” whose clouds are “fountains of goodness and love.” Everything we possess, beginning with life itself, is received from Him.

The Gospel also exposes how quickly we begin comparing what we have received with what someone else has received. The workers who came first are not deprived of anything promised to them. Their anger begins when they see the generosity shown to somebody else.

Immortal, Invisible gives us a rather different perspective. Before the God Smith describes, all of us are creatures. All of us receive our life from the same source. The distinctions that seem enormous from where we stand can become considerably smaller when we remember before whom we are standing.

This is one reason hymns of praise matter. Sometimes we sing in order to ask God for something, to confess something, or to tell the story of salvation. Sometimes we simply turn our attention toward God and remember who He is. That act can put quite a lot else back into proportion.

As you sing Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise this Sunday, pay attention to how many things Smith says God is before he says very much at all about us. The hymn begins by directing our attention away from ourselves and toward the One from whom every good gift comes.

As you sing, consider this question:

How does remembering who God is change the way I understand what He has given me?