"Come, We That Love the Lord" - known almost universally today by its refrain, 'We're marching to Zion' - is a hymn with two distinct lives: the contemplative Watts original of 1707, and the jubilant camp-meeting anthem created when Robert Lowry added his famous refrain in 1867. Together they produced one of the most energetically sung hymns in American and African-American Protestant worship.
The Composition
Isaac Watts published the original text in 1707 in Hymns and Spiritual Songs under the title 'Heavenly Joy on Earth.' Its five stanzas are a sober meditation on the joy of the redeemed in their journey toward the heavenly city: 'the hill of Zion yields / A thousand sacred sweets.' Watts drew on Psalm 48:12-13 - 'Walk about Zion, go around her, count her towers, consider well her ramparts' - and Hebrews 12:22 - 'But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem' - to create a vision of the church's present and future home. The original Watts text is contemplative and stately.
In 1867, the American hymn writer Robert Lowry (1826-1899) composed the refrain: 'We're marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion / We're marching upward to Zion, the beautiful city of God.' Lowry also composed a new tune in a faster, march-time meter. The combination transformed the character of the hymn entirely: what had been a meditation became a procession, what had been quiet reflection became collective energy.
Biblical Text
Psalm 48 is the foundational text: a Zion hymn celebrating the city of God as beautiful, well-defended, and the seat of divine glory. The psalm's invitation to 'walk about Zion' is an act of contemplation - the worshiper circles the city and considers its beauty as an act of praise. Watts takes this liturgical walk and makes it spiritual: the city the believer circles is the heavenly Jerusalem, described in Hebrews 12:22 as the present spiritual destination of the redeemed. Revelation 21:2 ('I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God') provides the eschatological horizon: the Zion of the present anticipates the New Jerusalem of the future.
The Creators
Isaac Watts (1674-1748) was England's greatest hymn writer and the father of the English hymn. He transformed congregational singing from strict psalm paraphrase to free Christian hymn, producing some of the most doctrinally rich and poetically accomplished sacred songs in the language. Robert Lowry (1826-1899) was a Philadelphia Baptist minister who became one of the most productive hymn composers of the Victorian era, contributing also to 'Shall We Gather at the River' and 'Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.'
Musical Character
Lowry's tune is in a brisk 6/8 or common time, with a simple melody in the verses that releases into the expansive march of the refrain. The march rhythm of 'We're marching to Zion' creates a physical experience of forward movement that matches the text's imagery: the congregation is not simply singing about going to Zion but is, through the act of singing together, already enacting the journey. This participatory dimension made the hymn especially powerful in the camp-meeting and revival tradition, where collective emotional experience was central to worship.
Theological Content
The hymn presents the Christian life as a communal pilgrimage toward a heavenly city. The Zion imagery draws on the rich Old Testament tradition of Zion theology - Jerusalem as the place of divine presence, safety, and glory - and reapplies it eschatologically: the city Christians march toward is the heavenly Jerusalem described in Hebrews 12 and Revelation 21. The march metaphor implies both urgency and companionship: believers march together, not alone, and the destination is sure. The refrain's repeated 'beautiful' draws on Psalm 48:2's description of Zion as 'beautiful in its loftiness, the joy of the whole earth.'
African-American Tradition
The hymn became particularly beloved in African-American worship, where the Zion imagery carried an additional layer of meaning: for enslaved and post-Reconstruction Black Christians, the march to Zion was simultaneously spiritual and political - an affirmation that the present order was not final, that there existed a city of God beyond the city of man where the suffering would be vindicated. The call-and-response structure of the refrain was well-suited to African-American congregational singing, and the march rhythm aligned with the strong rhythmic tradition of Black church music.
Legacy
The hymn remains one of the most widely sung in the Baptist and evangelical tradition worldwide. It appears in virtually every major English-language hymnal from the late nineteenth century onward. Its combination of Watts's theological substance with Lowry's popular energy represents the successful fusion of the learned and popular strands of Protestant hymnody.