Scripture Verse

Introduction

Background

Neale de­scribed how ea­rly Greek Chris­tians sang this hymn:

As mid­night ap­proached, the arch­bish­op, with his priests, ac­com­pan­ied by the king and queen, left the church and sta­tioned them­selves on the plat­form, which was raised con­si­der­ably from the ground, so that they were dis­tinct­ly seen by the peo­ple.

Everyone now re­mained in breath­less ex­pec­ta­tion, hold­ing an un­light­ed ta­per in rea­di­ness when the glad mo­ment should ar­rive, while the priests still con­tin­ued mur­mur­ing their mel­an­cho­ly chant in a low half whis­per.

Suddenly a sin­gle re­port of a can­non an­nounced that twelve o’clock had struck and that East­er Day had be­gun; then the old arch­bish­op, ele­vat­ing the cross, ex­claimed in a loud, ex­ult­ing tone, Chris­tos an­es­te! Christ is ris­en!

And in­stant­ly ev­ery sing­le in­di­vi­du­al of all that host took up the cry…At that same mo­ment the op­press­ive dark­ness was suc­ceed­ed by a blaze of light from thou­sands of tap­ers which…seemed to send streams of fire in all di­rect­ions.