Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

“Jesus Christ the Apple Tree” is the commonly used title for a poem published under the heading “Christ compared to an Apple-tree” in the August 1761 issue of The Spiritual Magazine, a London periodical for Calvinist Baptists.

Above the poem in the publication are words of its author:

Gentlemen,
Having spent some of my vacant time in the composition of short pieces of Divine Poetry, have sent you the following, by way of specimen; which, if thought worthy of a place in your magazine, shall communicate the others regularly. I am your well-wisher and constant reader, R.H. (see image)

“R.H.” is today believed to most likely be the Rev. Richard Hutchins, a Calvinist Baptist clergyman then serving in Long Buckby, Northamptonshire. The poem’s first known appearance in a hymnal, and in America, was in 1784 in Divine Hymns, or Spiritual Songs: for the use of Religious Assemblies and Private Christians compiled by Joshua Smith, a lay Baptist minister from New Hampshire. Because of its popularity in New England churches thereafter, it has often been wrongly attributed to an anonymous early American poet or to Smith.

The poem may be an allusion to the apple tree in Song of Solomon 2:3 (“As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste”), which has been interpreted as a metaphor for Jesus. It also alludes to other descriptions of “the tree of life” in both the Old and New Testaments.

Primitive yet profound, “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree” has been set to music by many composers, including a very popular setting by Elizabeth Poston (1905-1987). This new setting for unaccompanied SATB voices captures the rustic quality of the text with a rising-and-falling folk song-like melody, attractively harmonized.

SATB score (4 pages, 8.5×11″)