When was the verse starting The rich man in his castle removed from the Hymn all things bright and beautiful?

Answer 1

The verse in question reads: The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

God made them, high or lowly,

And ordered their estate. The offending lines were lines three and four. This verse was thought to be contrary to scripture, in that God creates all people equally, and that poverty is not a result of the will of God, but a result of the evil in the world. It was decided that this verse seemed to say that God somehow favoured some people bestowing riches on them, whilst others he made poor - for no reason other than he had 'favourites'. This was contrary to Christ's teaching ('the first shall be last and the last first'... 'it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God...' etc) and so the verse was dropped in almost all hymnbooks. Many other hymns have heresies in them. A good example is 'O Valiant Hearts' - the hymn of the British legion which equates Christ's sacrifice on the Cross with the sacrifice made by the soldiers in World War I. Whilst in no way belittling the sacrifice that these brave men made, the hymn's comparison is heresy in the extreme. It just goes to show that you should always obey the 11th commandment: 'Get not thy theology from hymns'!