Hymn Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
98 free Hymn trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Behind almost every hymn in the book is a story: a slave-ship captain writing about grace, a lawyer who lost four daughters at sea, a blind poet who turned out eight thousand texts, a dying vicar finishing one last prayer. This quiz covers the hymns most congregations know by heart and the people who wrote them: Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, Abide with Me, Rock of Ages, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, It Is Well with My Soul, Blessed Assurance, Be Thou My Vision, Jerusalem, Lift Every Voice and Sing and many more. Easy questions ask who wrote Amazing Grace and which hymn was said to be playing as the Titanic sank. Harder ones want the tune names (Eventide, Nicaea, Cwm Rhondda, Old Hundredth), the year Isaac Watts published his first collection, which hymn is sung at every FA Cup Final, and who translated a Swedish poem into How Great Thou Art. Nothing here quotes lyrics; the questions are about authors, tunes, dates and history. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the hymns and their writers, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up. Useful for church quiz nights, choir socials, Bible study groups and anyone who grew up with a hymnal.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote the words to 'Amazing Grace'?
John Newton
John Newton was a former slave-ship captain turned Anglican curate; the hymn illustrated his New Year's Day sermon in 1773.
Q 02In which hymn collection did 'Amazing Grace' first appear in print, in 1779?
Olney Hymns
Olney Hymns was written by the curate of Olney in Buckinghamshire with the poet William Cowper, for use at their parish prayer meetings.
Q 03What is the name of the tune to which 'Amazing Grace' has been sung since 1835?
New Britain
New Britain is the tune William Walker paired with the words in his 1835 shape-note book Southern Harmony, after more than 20 other melodies had been tried.
Q 04'Be Still, My Soul' is sung to a melody from which Sibelius tone poem?
Finlandia
Finlandia: the hymn tune is taken from Sibelius's 1899 tone poem and carries Katharina von Schlegel's German words, translated into English by Jane Borthwick in 1855.
Q 05Carl Boberg's 1885 poem 'O Store Gud', later a famous English hymn, was written in which language?
Swedish
Swedish: Carl Boberg wrote 'O Store Gud' in 1885 at Mönsterås on Sweden's Baltic coast, after watching a thunderstorm clear over the bay.
Q 06Which English missionary produced the 1949 translation of 'O Store Gud' sung by George Beverly Shea?
Stuart K. Hine
Stuart K. Hine, an English missionary who had worked in Ukraine, completed his English text in 1949; George Beverly Shea then made it famous at the postwar crusades.
Q 07Elvis Presley won his first Grammy for a 1967 gospel album named after which hymn?
How Great Thou Art
How Great Thou Art won at the 1968 ceremony, and a 1974 live recording of the same hymn won again; all three Grammys Presley won in his lifetime were for gospel records.
Q 08Henry Francis Lyte, the author of 'Abide with Me', was dying of which disease in 1847?
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis killed Lyte at Nice in November 1847, weeks after he preached a last sermon to his fishing-village parish at Brixham in Devon.
Q 09What is the name of William Henry Monk's tune for 'Abide with Me'?
Eventide
Eventide was composed by Monk for the first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern, which he edited; the name comes from the hymn's opening line, 'fast falls the eventide'.
Q 10'Abide with Me' is traditionally sung before which annual sporting event?
The FA Cup Final
The FA Cup Final has opened with 'Abide with Me' since 1927, when Cardiff City beat Arsenal; it was chosen reportedly because it was King George V's favourite hymn.
Q 11Who wrote 'Rock of Ages'?
Augustus Toplady
Augustus Toplady, a Devon vicar locked in a bitter pamphlet war with John Wesley over Calvinism, published 'Rock of Ages' in The Gospel Magazine in 1776.
Q 12'Be Thou My Vision' is a translation of a medieval poem in which language?
Irish
Irish: the medieval poem 'Rop tú mo baile' was translated by Mary Byrne in 1905 and versified by Eleanor Hull in 1912; its tune, Slane, began as the folk ballad 'With My Love on the Road'.
Q 13Which hymn is famously said to have been played by the band as the Titanic sank?
Nearer, My God, to Thee
Nearer, My God, to Thee, Sarah Flower Adams's 1841 hymn retelling Jacob's dream of a ladder to heaven, was also reportedly sung by passengers as the SS Valencia sank in 1906.
Q 21Fanny Crosby is credited as the first woman to do what in the United States Senate?
Speak there, reading a poem
Speak there, reading a poem: Crosby, a pupil of the New York Institution for the Blind, recited her own verses in Washington while lobbying for schools for the blind.
Q 22Which English minister, known as the father of English hymnody, wrote 'Joy to the World'?
Isaac Watts
Isaac Watts, a Nonconformist minister, broke with the custom of singing only metrical psalms by writing original hymns; 'Joy to the World' is his free reworking of Psalm 98.
Q 23'Our God, Our Help in Ages Past' paraphrases which chapter of the Psalter?
Psalm 90
Q 14Who composed the tune 'St Gertrude' for 'Onward, Christian Soldiers'?
Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan composed St Gertrude in 1871; Sabine Baring-Gould had written the words for children at Horbury Bridge, Yorkshire, to sing while marching to a neighbouring church.
Q 15Which organisation adopted 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' as its favoured processional?
The Salvation Army
The Salvation Army made 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' its favourite marching hymn; the words had won little notice until a rousing new tune of 1871 replaced the Haydn melody first used.
Q 16Who wrote both the words and the tune of 'A Mighty Fortress Is Our God'?
Martin Luther
Martin Luther wrote both text and melody, probably between 1527 and 1529, drawing on Psalm 46; it has been called the Battle Hymn of the Reformation for rallying support to the Reformers' cause.
Q 17Which German poet, writing in Paris in the 1830s, called 'Ein feste Burg' the Marseillaise of the Reformation?
Heinrich Heine
Heinrich Heine, in his 1830s essay on religion and philosophy in Germany, called the hymn the Marseillaise of the Reformation; it has been translated into English at least seventy times, including Carlyle's 'A safe stronghold'.
Q 18'It Is Well with My Soul' followed which disaster that killed Horatio Spafford's four daughters?
The sinking of the SS Ville du Havre
The sinking of the SS Ville du Havre in 1873 drowned all four girls; Spafford wrote the words while crossing to join his wife, and Philip Bliss named the tune after the ship.
Q 19Roughly how many hymn texts is the blind American writer Fanny Crosby credited with?
About 8,000
About 8,000 is the usual count; publishers wary of filling a hymnal with one name printed many of Crosby's texts under some 200 pen names.
Q 20Which Fanny Crosby hymn began with Phoebe Knapp asking what her new tune said?
Blessed Assurance
Blessed Assurance: Knapp played her new melody on the piano, and Crosby answered that the tune said 'Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine', then gave the rest of the first verse.
Psalm 90 ('Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations'); John Wesley later changed 'Our God' to 'O God', and the usual tune is William Croft's St Anne.
Q 24Which Charles Wesley carol originally mentioned 'the welkin'?
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing began in 1739 as 'Hark how all the welkin rings', welkin being an old word for the sky; George Whitefield rewrote the opening couplet in 1753.
Q 25'Great Is Thy Faithfulness' takes its title phrase from which Old Testament book?
Lamentations
Lamentations 3:23 ('great is thy faithfulness'); Thomas Chisholm wrote the poem in 1923 and William Runyan set it to music in Kansas; the postwar evangelistic crusades made it famous.
Q 26For whom did Cecil Frances Alexander write the 1848 collection containing 'All Things Bright and Beautiful'?
Little children
Little children were the audience for Hymns for Little Children, which also holds Once in Royal David's City; this hymn enlarges on the Creed's phrase 'maker of heaven and earth'.
Q 27Whose 1916 setting turned Blake's 'And did those feet in ancient time' into 'Jerusalem'?
Hubert Parry
Hubert Parry wrote it in 1916 at the request of Poet Laureate Robert Bridges, who wanted simple music a wartime audience could join in; Elgar orchestrated it in 1922.
Q 28'The Old Rugged Cross' was written by which Methodist evangelist?
George Bennard
George Bennard began the hymn in Michigan but could not finish it until a later run of revival meetings; Homer Rodeheaver then made it famous.
Q 29Joseph Scriven wrote 'What a Friend We Have in Jesus' as a poem in 1855 to comfort whom?
His mother in Ireland
His mother in Ireland: Scriven sent her the poem from Canada in 1855; it was published anonymously and his authorship emerged only decades later.
Q 30Charlotte Elliott's 'Just as I Am' became the altar-call song of which evangelist's crusades?
Billy Graham
Billy Graham's crusades closed with it as the invitation hymn, and Graham titled his 1997 autobiography 'Just As I Am'; the usual tune is William Bradbury's Woodworth.