The Christian pilgrim

Richard Hulan suggests that this popular text is a late version of a hymn by the backwoods Methodist revival preacher John Adam Granade (1763?-1807), who was born in North Carolina but worked chiefly in Tennessee (“John Adam Granade” 84, 86, #7). Granade pioneered a special style of camp-meeting hymn writing and left a considerable legacy.

The text first appeared in Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Use of Christians (Hulan, letter; Hinde, Pilgrim Songster [1828] 93-96; Shoemaker #33550). Hulan believes that the broadside The Bold Pilgrim and Apollian, now at the New-York Historical Society, may reproduce the text closest to Granade’s original composition. Coverly later printed a second edition of this broadside, evidently finding it commercially successful (1810).

This text is a versification of the passage in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) in which Christian meets Apollyon, whose name is a Greek translation of the Hebrew “Abaddon,” or  “destroyer.” Isaiah Thomas printed a two-volume adaptation of Bunyan’s well-known text in 1798, using the same title as on this broadside, The Christian Pilgrim.

The tune to which this hymn was sung is “Fair-Haven.”