Joy is a Fruit

John Newton wrote “Joy is a Fruit,” which was published in his and William Cowper’s Olney Hymns, in Three Books (London: W. Oliver, 1779). It is found in six common meter stanzas as Hymn 42 on pages 54-55 (Book I), with the scripture text “The joy of the Lord is your strength,” Nehemiah Chap. ix. 10. Newton was born in 1725, and died in 1807. He was buried at St Mary Woolnoth Churchyard in London, where he ministered nearly 30 years. In 1893, the remains of he and his wife Mary were moved to the churchyard of St. Peter and Paul in Olney, the town where he and Cowper produced their famous hymn book.

In life Newton is well known as a converted former slave trader who helped influence its eventual abolishment in England. In hymnody, he is best known as the author of “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.”

One tune with which this hymn is commonly found published is Elizabethtown, by George Kingsley. Kingsley was born in 1811 in Northampton, Massachusetts and died in Northampton in 1884. He married Mary D. Dwight in 1836, and they had at least five children, George D., Charles H., William M., Edward, and Mary.

Kingsley played the organ in Boston, Massachusetts at the Old South and Hollis Street churches and taught music in Philadelphia and Northampton. The American Classical Hymns site describes Kingsley as “Shy, modest to a fault, and all but forgotten today,” but that in his lifetime he “enjoyed moderate renown as a music teacher, compiler, and organist.” 

Elizabethtown probably first appeared in Kingsley’s tunebook The Sacred Choir: a Collection of Church Music in 1838, where it is found in the lower brace of page 109. Kingsley compiled a number of music books in his lifetime, including: The Harmonist, 1833 and Templi Carmina, 1853.

1. Joy is a fruit that will not grow
In nature’s barren soil;
All we can boast, till Christ we know,
Is vanity and toil.

2. But where the Lord has planted grace,
And made his glories known,
There fruits of heavenly joy and peace
Are found, and there alone.

3. A bleeding Saviour seen by faith,
A sense of pard’ning love,
A hope that triumphs over death,
Give joys like those above.

4. To take a glimpse within the vail,
To know that God is mine;
Are springs of joy that never fail,
Unspeakably divine!*

5. These are the joys that satisfy
And sanctify the mind;
Which make the spirit mount on high,
And leave the world behind.

6. No more, believers, mourn your lot,
But if you are the Lord’s,
Resign to them that know him not,
Such joys as earth affords.

* Changed in later printings to “Unspeakable! divine!”