The Composition
William Chatterton Dix wrote this Epiphany hymn in January 1860 while confined to bed during a serious illness, meditating on the Gospel reading for the Feast of the Epiphany (Matthew 2:1-12). The Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, commemorates the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus - the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles - and was one of the major feasts of the Christian year in the Anglican tradition that Dix inhabited. The hymn's composition during physical weakness gave it a particular devotional quality: Dix was meditating on a story of joyful, cost-bearing pilgrimage while himself unable to move.
Conrad Kocher had composed the tune 'Dix' (also known as 'Treuer Heiland') in 1838 as the setting of a German hymn; William Henry Monk adapted it for the English hymnal tradition and paired it with Dix's text in Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861). The combination has never been separated: the tune's confident stride and clear harmonic direction match perfectly the text's image of purposeful pilgrimage toward Christ.
Biblical Text
The hymn is structured as a typological meditation: each stanza takes a detail from the Magi's journey (Matthew 2:1-12) and draws a spiritual application for the present-day believer. The Magi's joy ('as with gladness men of old'), their gifts ('as they offered gifts most rare'), and their willingness to lay down crowns before the infant King provide the types; the believer's corresponding postures of joy, offering, and submission provide the antitypes.
Matthew 2:2 - 'Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him' - establishes the Magi's purpose: they follow the star not out of astronomical curiosity but to worship. Matthew 2:11 - 'On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh' - provides the material for the hymn's central stanzas.
Isaiah 60:6 - 'Herds of camels will cover your land, young camels of Midian and Ephah. And all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the LORD' - is the Old Testament prophecy that Matthew's account of the Magi fulfills. The nations bringing their gifts to Jerusalem and to the Messiah was an established eschatological expectation, and the Magi story reads as its inaugural fulfillment.
William Chatterton Dix
William Chatterton Dix (1837-1898) was born in Bristol, son of the physician and writer George Dix. He spent most of his adult life as a marine insurance agent in Glasgow - a decidedly non-clerical occupation unusual among Victorian hymn writers of comparable productivity. His hymns, written in leisure time rather than as professional output, include 'Come Unto Me, Ye Weary' and 'Alleluia! Sing to Jesus,' which has become one of the standard eucharistic hymns in the Anglican tradition.
Dix's 'As with Gladness' demonstrates the Victorian Tractarian-influenced tradition of typological meditation: taking a specific biblical narrative and drawing from it a pattern of Christian devotion. Each element of the Magi story - the star, the journey, the gifts, the bowing down - is a type of the corresponding Christian spiritual exercise. This approach, rooted in patristic biblical interpretation and renewed in the Oxford Movement's recovery of typology, gives the hymn its theological density despite its apparent simplicity.
Epiphany Tradition
The Feast of the Epiphany carries particular theological significance in the Anglican and Catholic traditions as the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles - the extension of the covenant beyond Israel to all nations. The Magi, traditionally interpreted as Gentile scholars from the East, represent the nations coming to worship Israel's Messiah, fulfilling the promise of Genesis 12:3 ('all peoples on earth will be blessed through you') and Isaiah 60's vision of the nations streaming to Jerusalem. 'As with Gladness' has served as the standard Epiphany hymn in Anglican worship for over 160 years, giving the feast one of its most distinctive musical expressions and making the typological logic of the Magi story - pilgrimage, gift-giving, worship - immediately accessible to every congregation that sings it.
The hymn's final stanza looks beyond the Magi's journey to the heavenly destination: "In the heavenly country bright need they no created light; Thou its light, its joy, its crown, Thou its sun which goes not down." This closing vision draws on Revelation 21:23-24 - "The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light" - completing the Epiphany typology by pointing from the star the Magi followed to the uncreated light that makes all created light unnecessary.
The Victorian practice of typological hymn-writing - taking a biblical narrative and drawing parallel application for the present-day believer - was closely associated with the Oxford Movement's recovery of patristic exegesis. The church fathers had read the Old Testament as a book of types and shadows pointing forward to Christ; the Tractarians extended this method to the entire biblical narrative, including New Testament stories like the Magi's visit. Dix was not a Tractarian himself, but his "As with Gladness" demonstrates how thoroughly this typological method had permeated Victorian Anglican hymnody by the 1860s.
The tune "Dix," named after the hymnist by William Henry Monk when he adapted it for Hymns Ancient and Modern, has had a distinguished career beyond its partnership with this Epiphany text. It has also been used with the harvest hymn "For the Beauty of the Earth" (Folliott Pierpoint, 1864), demonstrating the tune's capacity to carry texts of very different emotional registers. Its strong, confident melody and clear harmonic motion make it one of the most reliably effective tunes in the Victorian hymnbook tradition.