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“A little while,” - our Lord shall come. James George Deck* (1807-1884).
This hymn was first published in the Appendix to the 1841 edition of the Brethren book, Hymns for the Poor of the Flock (JJ, p. 3). It was prefaced by ' “A little while, and ye shall see me.” – John xvi. 16.' It had four 6-line stanzas:
“A little while,” – our Lord shall come, And we shall wander here no more;He'll take us to our Father's Home, Where He, for us, has gone before,To dwell with Him, to see his...
A brighter dawn is breaking. Percy Dearmer* (1867-1936).
Written for EH (1906) to fit the German tune SELNECKER (NUN LASST UNS GOTT DEM HERREN). Dearmer said that it was written for Eastertide 'because there was a dearth of cheerful Easter tunes' (Songs of Praise Discussed, 1933, p. 231):
A brighter dawn is breaking,And earth with praise is waking;For thou, O King most highest,The power of death defiest;
And thou hast come victorious,With risen Body glorious,Who now for ever livest,And life...
A charge to keep I have. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
First published in Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures (Bristol, 1762), in two 8-line DSM verses. It is one of 21 hymns on Leviticus, mostly one-verse hymns but including 'O thou who camest from above'*. This one is based on Leviticus 8: 35: 'Keep the charge of the Lord, that ye die not.' Its original ending followed the last phrase: 'Assur'd, if I my trust betray,/ I shall for ever die.' The severity of these lines (based...
A city radiant as a bride. Timothy Dudley-Smith* (1926- ).
First published in the quarterly News of Hymnody in 1987. Drawing on Revelation 21, it is a hymn on the subject of 'citizens of heaven'; which was, at that point in the development in the Church of England's alternative liturgies, the theme for the 'Last Sunday after Pentecost'. Although since the replacement of the 1980 Alternative Service Book this is no longer the case, the same chapter from Revelation now appears as an option for...
A few more years shall roll. Horatius Bonar* (1808-1889).
This was one of Bonar's earliest hymns, written when he was minister of North Parish Church, Kelso. It was printed as a leaflet and sung at Kelso on New Year's Day, 1843. It was published in Bonar's Songs of the Wilderness, No 2 (1844). It had six 8-line stanzas. A five-stanza text, omitting Bonar's stanza 5, was printed in the Appendix (1868) to the First Edition of A&M, and that remained the standard A&M version until the hymn...
A fitly spoken word. George Burden Bubier* (1823-1869).
From Hymns and Sacred Songs for Sunday-schools and Social Worship (Manchester, 1855), the hymnbook in which Bubier collaborated with George MacDonald* and his brother Charles. It was dated January 1855 (JJ, p. 190). Its originality is characteristic of Bubier's and MacDonald's work:
A fitly spoken word, It hath mysterious powers; Its far off echoes shall be heard Ringing through future hours.
An honest, truthful word, It has a...
A glorious company we sing. Albert Frederick Bayly* (1901-1984).
Written in 1946 for a Sunday School Anniversary at Morpeth Congregational Church, and published in The Sunday School Chronicle (1946), Rejoice O People (1950), and Sunday School Praise (1958). It has appeared in many books since, including HP, with four of the original five verses, omitting verse three:
A daring company we sing,
who bore by land and sea
the tidings of their Saviour's love,
his cross and victory:
till...
A great and mighty wonder. Greek, attributed to St Germanos of Constantinople* (ca. 655-before 754), translated by John Mason Neale* (1818-1866).
The Greek text, 'Mega kai paradoxon thauma tetelestai', is found in editions of the Menaea (twelve sections, one for each month, or 'men', hence the name Menaea) where it is attributed to Germanos of Constantinople* (or Germanus, for whom see Sabine Baring-Gould*, The Lives of the Saints, New Edition, 1897, v. 174-80). Neale's translation appeared in...
A hymn for martyrs sweetly sing. Bede* (673/4-735), translated by John Mason Neale* (1818-1866).
This hymn, 'Hymnum canentes Martyrum', is found in an anthology, Hymni Ecclesiastici (Cologne, 1556), ascribed to the Venerable Bede. Neale's translation of some of the verses appeared in Mediaeval Hymns and Sequences (1851), with a first line 'The hymn for conquering martyrs raise', and a note saying that it was 'a Hymn for the Holy Innocents'. It appeared in the First Edition of A&M with the...
A hymn of glory let us sing. Bede* (673/4-735), translated by Elizabeth Rundle Charles* (1828-1896).
Charles's translation of Hymnum canamus gloriae* appeared in her The Voice of Christian Life in Song (1858), where it had six verses:
A hymn of glory let us sing,
New hymns throughout the world shall ring;
By a new way none ever trod,
Christ mounteth to the throne of God.
The apostles on the mountain stand –
The mystic mount – in Holy Land;
They, with the Virgin-mother see
Jesus ascend in...
A light from heaven shone around. Gracia Grindal* (1943- ).
This was written in response to a general request from the committee of H82, which circulated a list of Festivals and Saints' Days for which it was seeking new hymns. This one, on the Conversion of St Paul, follows the account in Acts 9 closely. Since that time it has also appeared in Singing the New Testament (ed. Joyce Borger, Faith Alive, 2008).
JRW
A little child may know. Jane Eliza Leeson* (1807/8-1881).
From Leeson's Hymns and Scenes of Childhood (1842) where it was entitled 'God's Love of Little Children', in six verses. Its description of the world as 'a picture-book' suggests that it was intended for very young children:
Around me when I look, His handiwork I see;This world is like a picture book To teach his name to me.
The thousand little flowers Within our garden found,The rainbow and the soft spring showers, And every...
A little child the Saviour came. William Robertson, of Monzievaird* (1820-1864).
This hymn for Holy Baptism with its attractive first line was published in the Church of Scotland's Hymns for Public Worship (1861), and subsequently in the Scottish Hymnal (1870). It was also used by the Presbyterian Church of England, and is found in Psalms and Hymns for Divine Worship (1867), and in Church Praise (1884). In JJ, p. 2, it was reported that it had become more popular in America than in Britain,...
A living stream, as crystal clear. John Keble* (1792-1866), based on a hymn by John Mason* (ca. 1645-1694).
Keble wrote this hymn for the Salisbury Hymn-Book (1857). It was forthwith taken up by the compilers of the First Edition of A&M (1861), and it appeared in all editions of A&M until it was dropped by A&MR. Keble's seven 4-line verses were based on a hymn by John Mason from his Spiritual Songs: or Songs of Praise to Almighty God Upon several Occasions (1683). In Mason's book it...
A man there lived in Galilee. Somerset Lowry* (1855-1932).
According to Wesley Milgate* this hymn 'was apparently first published in School Worship (1926), set to FOREST GREEN' (Milgate, 1982, p. 88). In that version it had a refrain, which has been omitted in most subsequent books, though not in CP:
O Son of Man, O more than man,
Canst Thou our comrade be?
Then help us all, who hear Thy call,
To rise and follow Thee.
It had three stanzas, neatly celebrating the life, death and...
A mighty mystery we set forth. Mary Peters* (1813-1856), altered by George Rawson* (1807-1889).
This hymn appeared in Psalms and Hymns for the use of the Baptist Denomination (1858). In the Baptist Church Hymnal (1900) it was credited to Rawson. He has continued to be named as the author in some books, such as HP. The hymn is based on one by Mary Peters beginning 'O Lord, whilst we confess the worth', published in her Hymns intended to help the Communion of Saints (1847), a book published by...
A purple robe, a crown of thorn. Timothy Dudley-Smith* (1926-2024).
Written at the author's home at Sevenoaks, Kent, in October 1968, this Passiontide text was published the next year in Youth Praise 2. This was followed by several mainstream hymnals in the UK (including A&MRW) and the USA as well as two of the author's own collections; other appearances include at least two publications in a Chinese translation.
It has usually been set to David Wilson*'s composition A PURPLE ROBE,...
A safe stronghold our God is still. Martin Luther* (1483-1546), translated by Thomas Carlyle* (1795-1881).
This is a translation of Luther's magnificent hymn based on Psalm 46, 'Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott'*, the date of which is uncertain (perhaps 1529). Carlyle had been studying German literature during the 1820s, and was supporting himself in part by publishing essays on German authors and by translating. This translation appeared in Fraser's Magazine in 1831, entitled 'Luther's Psalm'....
A Saviour who died our salvation to win. Ada Ruth Habershon* (1861-1918).
This hymn is dated 1905, one of many written for the evangelistic campaign of Charles M. Alexander* with his teacher Reuben Archer Torrey*. It was sometimes entitled 'Is He Yours?', taken from the refrain:
Is He yours? Is He Yours? Is this Saviour, who loves you, yours?
Another title was 'The Pilot Song', from stanza 3, which stands out from the other three more traditional stanzas, which celebrate 'Saviour',...
A sovereign protector I have. Augustus Montague Toplady* (1740-1778).
This hymn was published in The Gospel Magazine (December 1774), with the title 'A chamber hymn'. It is found in Toplady's diary for 1 January 1768. 'A sovereign protector I have' is actually the fifth line of the opening stanza; the hymn originally began with a vivid description of the need for sleep, from which comes the 'chamber' (bedchamber) of the title:
What tho' my frail Eyelids refuse
Continual watching to...
A stranger once did bless the earth. John Clare* (1793-1864).
This is from a poem by Clare beginning 'When trouble haunts me, need I sigh', which has ten 6-line stanzas. It was not published during Clare's life-time, but was included in John Clare: Poems chiefly from Manuscript, edited by Edmund Blunden and Alan Porter (1920). It is found in Margaret Grainger's Index to the Clare manuscripts held at Peterborough Museum (under A 57, so written 1824-35). It is printed in The Poems of John Clare,...
A type of those bright rays on high. Latin, 15th Century, translated by John Mason Neale* (1818-1866), and the Compilers of A&M (1861).
This translation of 'Caelestis formam gloriae'* (Neale and JJ use 'Coelestis...'. Frere, 1909, and Frost, 1962, use 'Caelestis') is from The Hymnal Noted Part II (1854), where it was headed 'O Nata Lux de Lumine' incorrectly. The other details on the 1854 page are 'For the Transfiguration' and 'From the Salisbury Hymnal', with a quotation from Philippians...
A virgin unspotted, the prophet foretold. English traditional carol.
An alternative first line begins 'A virgin most pure, as the prophets foretold'. The text appears in many different versions. It originated probably in the western counties of England, perhaps in broadsheets: it is found in William Sandys*'s Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern, including the most popular in the West of England, with the tunes to which they are sung (1833). The New Oxford Book of Carols identifies the first...
Allchin, Arthur MacDonald. b. Acton, London, 20 April 1930; d. Oxford, 23 December 2010. Donald, as he was always called, was the youngest of four children of Frank MacDonald Allchin, a physician, and Louise Maude, née Wright. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated in modern history and proceeded to take a BLitt, published as The Silent Revolution (1958), a history of 19th-century Anglican religious communities which became the standard study of the...
SEYMOUR, Aaron Crossley Hobart. b. County Limerick, Ireland, 19 December 1789; d. Bristol, 22 October 1870. He was the son of a vicar of Caherelly in the diocese of Cashel, Co. Tipperary, and the brother of the anti-Catholic polemicist Michael Hobart Seymour (1800-74). He received most of his education at home, and was drawn in early life into the Calvinistic 'Connexion', founded by Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon* (to whom 'When Thou, my righteous judge, shall come' has been...
Abide among us with thy grace. Josua Stegmann* (1588-1632), translated by Catherine Winkworth* (1829-1878).
This translation of Stegmann's 'Ach bleibe mit deiner Gnade'* was printed in Winkworth's Lyra Germanica II (1858), in the section for 'Evening Prayer', entitled 'At the Close of the Sabbath'. It subsequently appeared in her Chorale Book for England (1863). Its six 4-line stanzas present a simple but profound exposition of the Christian life, moving out to a general presentation from its...
Abide with me; fast falls the eventide. Henry Francis Lyte* (1793-1847).
Probably written in 1847, this is one of the world's best known hymns. Based on Luke 24:49, it is particularly associated with funeral services, but has had wide appeal in secular contexts as well. Its origins are somewhat uncertain. It was originally thought that Lyte had written it in his study on the evening before preaching his farewell sermon in the parish of Brixham, Devon, in September 1847; this account is...
Above the clear blue sky. John Chandler* (1806-1876).
First published in Chandler's The Hymns of the Church, mostly Primitive (1841). It is one of the few hymns by Chandler that are not translations. It appeared in the Second Edition of A&M (1875) in the section 'For the Young', and was at one time very well known: JJ described its use as 'somewhat extensive' (p.8):
Above the clear blue sky,In heaven's bright abode,The Angel host on highSing praises to their God: Alleluia! They love...
Above the starry spheres. Edward Caswall* (1814-1875).
This translation of 'Iam Christus astra ascenderat' was made by Caswall for his Lyra Catholica (1849). It was placed there for Matins on Whit-Sunday. It was a hymn of nine 4-line stanzas, the last of which was a doxology. The previous eight stanzas were a succinct narrative of the events of the first Whit-Sunday, beginning with the reminder that this came ten days after Ascension Day - 'Above the starry spheres,/ To where He was before,/...
Accept, O Lord, our Alms, though small. Wilson Carlile* (1847-1942).
This was printed by Lady Victoria Carbery* in the Church Hymnal for the Christian Year (1917, retained in the 1920 edition). It was included in the 'Introduction', in a section 'Hymns for the Alms and Oblations'. It was preceded by a quotation from 1 Peter 2: 5: 'Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.' It also referred...
WIDDOP, Accepted. b. Ovenden, West Yorkshire, 1750 (baptized 21 October); d. 9 March, 1801. Widdop was an amateur musician and composer strongly associated with Methodism in the Halifax area of West Yorkshire; he was baptised at Ovenden. Lightwood describes him as 'a cloth worker by trade, and an amateur musician of considerable fame in his day' (1938, p. 59). He seems to have spent his life around Halifax, principally in the small villages of Illingworth and Ovenden.
Many of his tunes are...
According to thy gracious word. James Montgomery* (1771-1854).
First published in Montgomery's The Christian Psalmist (Glasgow, 1825), with the heading '“This do in remembrance of me” Luke 22:19' in six stanzas. It was repeated in Montgomery's Original Hymns (1853), and since that time it has appeared in many books, with slight variations. It was printed in EH and NEH, and came into the A&M tradition with A&MCP in 2000. It has long been a favourite with nonconformists, though it was...
GREENAWAY, Ada Rundall. b. Trivandrum, India, 12 October 1861; d. Woking, Surrey, 15 May 1937. She was the daughter of a general in the Indian army. Like many army children, she was sent to Britain as a child. She lived in Surrey in later years, first at Guildford, and finally at Woking. She had an arrangement to write improving words for the calendars and Christmas cards of Mowbrays, the religious publishers. Her 'Rise in the strength of God'* (in the Second Supplement of A&M, 1916, and in...
HABERSHON, Ada Ruth. b. Marylebone, London, 8 January 1861; d. London, 1 February 1918. She came from a religious family: she was the daughter of a physician, Dr Samuel Habershon, and his wife Grace. She was educated at a boarding school at Dover. She was steeped in evangelical culture: she was a friend of Charles Haddon Spurgeon*, and an enthusiastic supporter of the 1884 London Mission of Dwight L. Moody* and Ira D. Sankey*. Her autobiography and memoir, A Gatherer of Fresh Spoil, compiled by...
FOX, Adam. b. Kensington, London, 15 July 1883; d. Westminster, London, 17 January 1977. He was educated at University College, Oxford (BA 1906, MA 1909), becoming an assistant master at Lancing College, Sussex (1906-18). During this time at Lancing he trained for the priesthood at Cuddesdon College, and was ordained (deacon 1911, priest 1913). He was Warden of Radley College, near Oxford (1918-24), before teaching at the Diocesan College, Rondebosch, South Africa (1925-29). He returned to...
Adam lay y-bounden. English, ca. 1400, author unknown.
This carol is found in the British Library Sloane MS 2593. It is thought to date from ca. 1400. It was printed in The Oxford Book of Carols (1928), with a tune by Peter Warlock (1894-1930). It has since become widely known through its inclusion in the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols* at King's College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve, when it normally follows the First Lesson, telling of the judgement of God on Adam and Eve and the serpent....
PROCTER, Adelaide Anne. b. London, 30 October 1825; d. London, 2 February 1864. She was the daughter of Bryan Waller Procter, a distinguished literary figure and friend of Charles Dickens. Under the pseudonym 'Mary Berwick', she submitted poems to Dickens's periodicals: 73 of them were published in Household Words and seven in All the Year Round. Her poems were published in Legends and Lyrics (First Series 1858, Second Series 1861). After her death they were published in a single volume, with...
THRUPP, Adelaide ('A.T.'). b. London, 1831; d. Guildford, Surrey, 1908. She was the sister (not the daughter, or the wife, as is sometimes asserted) of Joseph Francis Thrupp*, and she assisted him with the publication of Psalms and Hymns for Public Worship (Cambridge, 1853). In this book his hymns appear with the initials 'J.F.T.' and the hymn by which she is remembered, 'Lord, who at Cana's wedding-feast'*, is one of two given the initials 'A.T.' The other was 'O Thou, who didst Thy light...
Adeste, fideles. Latin, 18th-century, attributed to John Francis Wade* (1711/12-1786).
The origin of this Latin Christmas hymn, translated as 'O come, all ye faithful'*, is obscure, but it is linked to the name of John Francis Wade, who worked as a plainchant copyist and teacher of plainchant at the English College, Douai. Wade was well known in English Catholic circles, and connected with leading Catholic musicians at the embassy chapels in London. Few details of his life are known;...
Advent tells us Christ is near. (Arabella) Katherine Hankey* (1834-1911).
According to JJ, p. 483, this was written in 1888 for Sunday School children at St Peter's, Eaton Square, London, then as now a prosperous part of the city (although Hankey organised classes for shop girls). It was printed on a card, with a tune composed by Hankey herself, before being included in many English-speaking hymnbooks on both sides of the Atlantic. It is not a hymn for Advent, in spite of the first line: it is...
Affirm anew the three-fold name. Timothy Dudley-Smith* (1926-2024).
Built upon its four imperatives of 'Affirm…Declare…Confirm…Renew…', this hymn of Christian dedication and renewal was written for the 1998 Lambeth Conference of worldwide Anglican bishops (see Lambeth Praise*). The Archbishop of Canterbury's Secretary for this event wrote well in advance to Dudley-Smith outlining the conference's four main themes; a small selection of hymns was to be used including some new texts. Dudley-Smith...
Afflicted souls, to Jesus dear. John Fawcett* (1740-1817).
Published in Fawcett's Hymns adapted to the circumstances of Public Worship and Private Devotion (Leeds, 1782). It was headed 'As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Deut. xxxiii 25.'. It had seven stanzas, each ending with graceful variations on the same line:
Afflicted souls, to Jesus dear,Thy Saviour's gracious promise hear, His faithful word declares to thee, That as thy days, thy strength shall be.
Let not thy heart despond and...
After darkness, light. Fred Pratt Green* (1903-2000).
Written for Seven Words from the Cross (1972), an unpublished cantata by Francis Westbrook*, the text appeared in Partners in Praise (1979), after The Methodist Recorder had printed this Easter hymn, inviting tunes for its unusual metre, 5.5.5.4. Two tunes were selected: it is normally sung to RIDGEWAY, by Brian R. Hoare*. It is a remarkable example of a modern hymn in simple rhythm, with sharp contrasts and oppositions, and economy of...
Again the Lord of life and light. Anna Letitia Barbauld* (1743-1825).
First published in her friend William Enfield*'s Hymns for Public Worship: selected from various authors, and intended as a supplement to Dr Watts's Psalms (Warrington, 1772), where it was entitled 'For Easter-Sunday'. It appeared in Barbauld's Poems (1773), as 'Hymn III', with the same title. It had eleven stanzas.
Many different selections from the eleven stanzas have been made, beginning with William Bengo...
Again the Lord's own day is here. Attributed to Thomas à Kempis* (ca. 1380-1471), translated by John Mason Neale* (1818-1866) and the Compilers of A&M (1861).
This hymn was used in the 'Evening' section for 'Sunday' in the First Edition of A&M. It was based on a translation by Neale in The Hymnal Noted, Part II (1854). The Latin text began 'En dies est dominica'. Frost (1962, p. 149) notes that the translation is of a selection of stanzas (1, 4, 5, 6, 29) of a poem of 29 stanzas...
Ah Jesu Christ, my Lord most dear. Heinrich von Laufenburg* (ca. 1390- ca. 1460), translated by Catherine Winkworth* (1827-1878).
This tender German hymn is from a Strasbourg MS, dated 1429 in Wackernagel, Das Deutsche Kirchenlied, II. p. 534 (modern books date it 1430).
Winkworth translated the five 6-line stanzas, as follows:
Ah Jesu Christ, my Lord most dear, As Thou wast once an infant here,So give this little child, I pray,Thy grace and blessing day by day: Ah Jesu, Lord Divine, ...
Ah, holy Jesu, how hast thou offended. Johann Heermann* (1585-1647), translated by Robert Bridges* (1844-1930).
From the Yattendon Hymnal, Part II (1897). This is Bridges's translation of 'Herzliebster Jesu, was hast du verbrochen'*, first published in Heermann's Devoti Musica Cordis (Leipzig and Breslau, 1630) together with its tune, HERZLIEBSTER JESU. This was itself a translation of a text at one time attributed to St Augustine* and then to St Anselm, but now thought to be by Jean de...
GAUNT, Alan. b. Manchester, 26 May 1935; d. The Wirral, Merseyside, 19 July 2023. He was educated at Silcoates School, Lancashire Independent College, and Manchester University. He was ordained in the Congregational (later United Reformed Church) ministry in 1958, and served churches at Clitheroe and Barrow, Lancashire; Keighley, Yorkshire; Sunderland; Heswall; the South-West Manchester group of Baptist and United Reformed churches; and Windermere.
He published books of prayers, including New...
LUFF, Alan Harold Frank. b. Bristol, 6 November 1928; d. Cardiff, 16 April 2020. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School. After University College, Oxford (1947-1952), where he read 'Greats' (Literae Humaniores, Greek and Latin/ Ancient Philosophy and History) and then Theology (1952), he trained for the Anglican priesthood at Westcott House, Cambridge (1954-56). He took Holy Orders (deacon 1956, priest 1957), and after curacies at Stretford and Swinton, diocese of Manchester (1956-62), he...
DALE, Alan Taylor. b. Baddeley Green, near Stoke-on-Trent, 9 April 1902; d. Dartmouth, Devon, 31 January 1979. He was educated at Hanley School, Stoke. He trained as a teacher, and taught for two years before entering Victoria Park College, Manchester, to train for the United Methodist Church ministry. Ordained in 1928, he was a missionary in China (1929-35), followed by Methodist circuits at Skipton, Blackpool North, Sheffield North-East, and Bath. His final post was as a lecturer in religious...
Alas! and did my Saviour bleed. Isaac Watts* (1674-1748).
From Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707), Book II, 'Composed on Divine Subjects', with the title 'Godly Sorrow arising from the Sufferings of Christ'. It had six stanzas.
The original stanza 2 has usually been omitted:
Alas! and did my Saviour bleed, And did my sov'reign die?Would he devote that sacred Head For such a Worm as I?
Thy Body slain, sweet Jesus, thine,
And bath'd in its own Blood,
While all expos'd to Wrath divine
The...
Alas, what hourly dangers rise. Anne Steele* (1717-1778).
From Steele's Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional (1760), where the author was named as 'Theodosia'. It was entitled 'Watchfulness and Prayer, Matt. 26: 41'. The reference is to the verse beginning 'Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation'. It had six stanzas:
Alas, what hourly dangers rise! What snares beset my way! To heaven then let me lift my eyes, And hourly watch and pray.
How oft my mournful thoughts complain, ...
ORSBORN, Albert (William Thomas). b. Maidstone, Kent, 4 September 1886; d. Boscombe, Hampshire, 4 February 1967. He was the son of Salvation Army officers who had helped to pioneer Army work in Norway in 1888; he became one of the Army's most significant writers of congregational song in the 20th century.
His early efforts at writing poetry, as a junior clerk, aged about 15, were despised by his office manager, but were encouraged by the editors of The War Cry, the Salvationist newspaper, when...
BAYLY, Albert Frederick. b. Bexhill, Sussex, 6 September 1901; d. Chichester, 26 July 1984. He was educated at Hastings Grammar School. He trained as a shipwright at the Royal Dockyard School, Portsmouth; but working on warships was contrary to his strong pacifist views, and he offered for the Congregational ministry, having obtained by part-time study an external BA (1924) from London University. He trained at Mansfield College, Oxford (1925-28), and was ordained in 1929. He served at Whitley...
TOZER, Albert Edmonds. b. Little Sutton, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, 13 January 1857; d. Steyning, near Brighton, Sussex, February 1910. He was educated at the City of London School, and the Royal Academy of Music. A brilliant young organist, he was elected FRCO at the age of 19. He was made an ARCM in 1885. He completed a BMus at Durham University and a DPhil at Oxford University.
As a young man Tozer was an organist at two Anglican parishes on the south coast, St Mary Magdalene at St Leonard's...
PEACE, Albert Lister. b. Huddersfield, Yorkshire, 26 January 1844; d. Blundellsands, near Liverpool, 14 March 1912. Peace was a child prodigy, largely self-taught. He was organist of Holmfirth Parish Church, near Huddersfield, at the age of nine, and thereafter organist of four other Yorkshire churches. On moving to Glasgow, he continued to work as a church organist, and he was appointed to Glasgow Cathedral in 1879. The Church of Scotland had lifted the ban on organs in 1865, and Peace was...
DAWSON, Albert Mason Patrick. b. Wicklow, Ireland, 8 May 1880; d. 13 March 1963. He was educated in Cheshire at Frodsham Grammar School and Chester School of Science and Arts. He published two books of poetry, St Phocas and Other Poems (1923) and The Pageant of Man: Poems (1943); also 'Where love is, God is': a Modern Morality Play founded on Tolstoy's Story (1919). He was closely associated with the Adult School Movement, and was President of the Clapham and Balham Adult School, which suggests...
MIDLANE, Albert. b. Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight, 23 January 1825; d. Newport, Isle of Wight, 27 February 1909. He was educated at Newport, Isle of Wight, and contributed to magazines in his youth under the name 'Little Albert'. He was then employed as an ironmonger's assistant, ultimately going into business for himself as tinsmith and ironmonger. Though he received his religious training in the Congregational church and its Sunday school, in which he became a teacher, he subsequently joined the...
MILNER-BARRY, Alda Marguerite. b. Scothorne (now Scothern), Lincolnshire, 18 August 1875; d. Weston-super-Mare, 15 April 1940. She was the daughter of the vicar of Scothorne, Edward Milner-Barry. She was the author of Lessons on the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer. Junior Classes. Prepared for Use in South Africa (London and Johannesburg, 1939). A posthumous publication, edited with Dorothy Allsup, was Forms of Prayer and Praise for Use in Sunday School (1946). She was a student and an...
WYTON, Alec (Alexander Francis). b. London, 3 August 1921; d. Danbury, Connecticut, 18 March 2007. After his parents separated, he received his early encouragement from an aunt in Northampton who suggested he learned the piano and organ. When war broke out in 1939, he joined the Royal Corps of Signals but was discharged early owing to a duodenal ulcer. He then went on to the Royal Academy of Music and, in 1943, he became organ scholar at Exeter College, Oxford (BA 1945) where he studied history...
BRENT SMITH, Alexander. b. Brookethorpe, near Gloucester, 8 October 1889; d. Brookethorpe, 3 July 1950. He received his education at the King's School, Worcester, and was a chorister in Worcester Cathedral. After studying with Ivor Atkins, he became his assistant organist. In 1912 he was appointed Director of Music at Lancing College, Sussex, where Peter Pears was among his pupils. He left Lancing in 1934 and taught at Pate's Grammar School in Cheltenham. He served as an enthusiastic member of...
CARMICHAEL, Alexander. b. Lismore, Argyll, 1 December 1832; d. Edinburgh, 6 June 1912. He worked for a time in the customs and excise division of the Scottish Civil Service, with periods in the Highlands and Islands. He married Mary Frances MacBean in 1868, and they lived on South Uist until 1882, when they moved to Edinburgh, where they became the centre of a Celtic revival. Alexander was the compiler of Carmina Gadelica* (first published in 1900), a two-volume collection of verses, including...
EWING, Alexander. b. Old Machar, Aberdeen, 3 January 1830; d. Taunton, Somerset, 11 July 1895. He studied law at Marischal College, Aberdeen, but gave it up to study music at Heidelberg, Germany. He joined the army in 1855, serving in the Crimean war, and became a professional soldier, serving in various stations including China and Australia and rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He retired in 1889, and lived at Taunton, Somerset.
Ewing composed part-songs, anthems, and other pieces,...
MacMILLAN, Alexander. b. Edinburgh, 19 October 1864; d. Toronto, 5 May 1961. Born and educated in Edinburgh, Alexander MacMillan moved to Canada following his graduation from the University of Edinburgh, licensed by the United Presbyterian Presbytery of Edinburgh in June, 1887. He described what happened when he was a student:
While a student in the faculty of Arts in Edinburgh University, and in the Divinity Hall, Edinburgh, I felt a gradual and growing desire to make Canada the sphere of my...
REINAGLE, Alexander Robert. b. Brighton, 21 August 1799; d. Kidlington, near Oxford, 6 April 1877. He was brought up in Oxford where his father, the cellist and composer Joseph Reinagle, had settled. After studying with his father he worked as a teacher of stringed instruments in Oxford and was organist of St Peter-in-the-East (1822-53). During the 1860s he was highly active in Oxford music-making and worked closely with John Stainer* who, between 1860 and 1872, was organist of Magdalen...
BARRY, Alfred. b. London, 15 January 1826; d. Windsor, 1 April 1910. He was the son of the architect of the Houses of Parliament, Sir Charles Barry. He was educated at King's College, London (1841-44) and Trinity College, Cambridge (1844-48; BA 1848, MA 1851). He was briefly a Fellow of Trinity College, and took Holy Orders (deacon 1850, priest 1853). By that time he had become sub-Warden of Trinity College, Glenalmond, Perthshire, an independent school of the Scottish Episcopal Church founded...
ALSTON, Alfred Edward. b. British Columbia, Canada, 25 June 1862; d. Framingham Earl, Norfolk, UK, 13 May 1927. Educated in England at St Paul's School, London, and Gloucester Theological College, Alston took Holy Orders (deacon 1886, priest 1887), and after a curacy at St Mark's, Gloucester (1886-87) he was appointed rector of Framingham Earl with Bixley, Norfolk, where he remained until his death, by which time he had been rector for almost fifty years. He published Some Liturgical Hymns...
TENNYSON, Alfred. b. Somersby, Lincolnshire, 6 August 1809; d. Haslemere, Surrey, 6 October 1892. He was the son of the rector of Somersby, educated at Louth Grammar School, and then privately. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, leaving in 1831 without taking a degree, but having published Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830).
At Cambridge he became friendly with the brilliant Arthur Henry Hallam (1811-33), whose sudden death, and the reflections upon it, were the cause of Tennyson's most...
FLOWERDEW, Alice. b. 1759; d. Ipswich, Suffolk, 23 September 1830. Her maiden name is unknown (JJ, p. 379). She married Daniel Flowerdew, who for some years held a Government appointment in Jamaica. He died in 1801, and she suffered further distress when her son, Charles Frederic Flowerdew, died on 29 November 1802, aged 21. She opened a school in Islington. She later lived in Bury St Edmunds, where she continued to teach, and Ipswich. She has been variously described as a General Baptist and a...
ROBERTSON, Alison Margaret (née Malloch). b. Glasgow, 22 February 1940. She was the younger twin of the Revd. Jack and Nancy Malloch. In 1948 the family moved to the Gold Coast (now Ghana), when her father became a Church of Scotland missionary principal of the Teacher Training College at Akropong. Her mother ran a baby clinic once a week and Alison, at the age of 10, was made responsible for the small wounds part of the clinic, cleaning and dressing fresh and infected wounds sustained by the...
All creatures of our God and King. William Henry Draper* (1855-1933).
This is a free versification of the 'Cantico di frate sole'* of St Francis. It was written for a children's Whitsuntide Festival at Adel, Leeds, when Draper was the incumbent at Adel, between 1899 and 1919. Draper could not remember the exact year in which he wrote the translation, but it was published in the Public School Hymn Book (1919), so it was known before that book was compiled. It was written to be sung to the tune...
All glory to God in the sky. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
First published in Hymns for the Nativity of our Lord (1744), in five 8-line stanzas, and reprinted in full in John Wesley*'s A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists (1780), in the Section 'For Believers Rejoicing'; and in subsequent Wesleyan Methodist hymnbooks.
Since the Wesleyan Methodist Hymn Book (1904), the final stanza has been omitted:
No horrid alarum of war
Shall break our eternal repose;
No...
All glory, laud and honour. Theodulf of Orleans* (ca. 760- ca. 821), translated by John Mason Neale* (1818-1866).
This is a translation of the Latin hymn, 'Gloria, laus et honor'*, attributed to St Theodulf (or Theodulph), who was bishop of Orleans, France. During the reign of Louis I (the son of Charlemagne), Theodulf was imprisoned in Angers for some time beginning in 818. According to Clichtoveus in his Elucidatorium Ecclesiasticum (Paris, 1516), the imprisoned bishop sang the hymn from his...
All hail the power of Jesu's name. Edward Perronet* (172?-1792).
First published in full in The Gospel Magazine (April 1780), in eight stanzas, with the title 'On the Resurrection, the Lord is King'. Before that, the opening stanza had appeared anonymously in the same magazine (November 1779) together with a tune, now known as MILES LANE.
The hymn was later printed in Perronet's Occasional Verses, Moral and Sacred (1785), entitled 'On the Resurrection'. The text was much altered, and...
All hail, adorèd Trinity. Latin, before 11th century, translated by John David Chambers* (1805-1893).
The Latin text of this hymn began 'Ave! Colenda Trinitas'. According to JJ, p. 98, it was in The Latin Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church (Durham: the Surtees Society, 1851), from the Durham MS of the 11th century. Frost described it as 'One of the Anglo-Saxon hymns for the Trinity office, but it did not find a place in the Norman and later Uses. Its versification is, in parts, not even...
All my heart this night rejoices. Paul Gerhardt* (1607-1676), translated by Catherine Winkworth* (1827-1878).
Gerhardt's hymn, beginning 'Fröhlich soll mein Herze springen'*, was first published in Johann Crüger*'s Praxis Pietatis Melica (1653). It had 15 stanzas of eight lines each, portraying the Christ child as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and who is worshipped by the shepherds and the Wise Men. Winkworth translated 10 stanzas, omitting stanzas 3-5, 13 and 14, for...
All my hope on God is founded. Joachim Neander* (1650-1680), translated by Robert Bridges* (1844-1930).
Joachim Neander's 'Meine Hoffnung stehet feste'* was published in A und Ω. Joachimi Neandri Glaub- und Liebesübung: auffgemuntert durch einfältige Bundes Lieder und Danck-Psalmen (Bremen, 1680) where it was entitled 'Der nach dem Essen Danckende' ('Grace after food'). Bridges's free translation appeared in the Yattendon Hymnal Part III (1898), in five stanzas, with its 1680 tune, labelled...
'All my living fountains will spring up in you!' Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig* (1783-1872), translated by Alan Gaunt* (1935-2023).
This hymn, 'Alle mine kilder skal vaere hos dig!', has its roots in Psalm 87: 'On the holy mountain stands the city God has founded; the Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O City of God.' A standard commentary speaks of this particular psalm as expressing the highest point of the universalism...
All people that on earth do dwell. Probably by William Kethe* (d. 1594).
This paraphrase of the 100th psalm was printed in two collections of psalms by the English Protestant exiles in Geneva, both entitled Four Score and Seven Psalmes of David in English Mitre [sic] (with slight differences in the title page) and published in 1561. It also appeared in John Day*'s Psalter of 1560-61. It was not included in The Whole Booke of Psalmes, the 'Old Version'* of 1562, but appeared as one of two...
All praise to our redeeming Lord. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
Entitled 'At Meeting of Friends', this was first published in Hymns for those that seek and those that have Redemption in the Blood of Jesus Christ (1747), in three 8-line stanzas:
All Praise to our Redeeming Lord, Who joins us by his GraceAnd bids us, Each to Each restor'd, Together seek his Face.He bids us build each other up, And gather'd into One;To our high Calling's glorious Hope We Hand in Hand go on.
The Gift which He on...
See 'Glory to thee my God, this night'*
All praise to Thee, O Lord. Hyde Wyndham Beadon* (1812-1891).
From The Parish Hymn Book (1863), the book edited by Beadon, Greville Phillimore*, and James Russell Woodford*. It began 'Glory to Thee, O Lord', altered to the present first line, perhaps to avoid confusion with 'Glory to Thee, O Lord'* by Emma Toke*, published a decade earlier in 1852. It has appeared in a number of books, if only because it is one of the few hymns to celebrate the first miracle of Christ at the marriage of Cana...
All prophets hail thee, from of old rejoicing. Thomas Alexander Lacey* (1853-1931).
This is one of the few hymns on the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as related in Luke 2: 22-33. It is a translation of a Latin hymn attributed to Hrabanus Maurus* (ca. 780-856) beginning 'Quod chorus vatum venerandus olim'. It was translated into fluent Sapphic stanzas:
All prophets hail thee, from of old announcing, By the inbreathèd Spirit of the Father, God's Mother, bringing prophecies to...
All things are possible to him. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
From Hymns and Sacred Poems (1749), Book II, where it was entitled 'All things are possible to him that believeth' (from Mark 9: 23), one of a sub-section entitled 'Hymns for those that wait for full Redemption'. It had eight complex stanzas:
All Things are possible to Him, That can in Jesu's Name believe:Lord, I no more thy Truth blaspheme, Thy Truth I lovingly receive;I can, I do believe in Thee,All Things are possible to me.
The...
All things praise thee, Lord most high. George William Conder* (1821-1874).
First published in an Appendix of 1874 to Psalms, Hymns, and Passages of Scripture for Christian Worship (Leeds, 1853), generally known as the 'Leeds Hymn Book', edited by Conder and other Congregationalists, including George Rawson*. The book had been first compiled when Conder was minister of Belgrave Chapel, Leeds, from 1849 to 1864, but it is not known when this hymn was written. It had six stanzas, beginning:
'All...
All ye that pass by. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
First published in Hymns on the Great Festivals, and Other Occasions (1746), the book in which Wesley's texts, some unpublished, were set to music by his friend John Frederick Lampe*. This is hymn 4 in the book, entitled 'On the Crucifixion', the first of three hymns with that title. It was then published in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1749), with the title 'Invitation to Sinners'. It is based on Lamentations 1: 12: 'Is it nothing to you, all ye...
All ye that seek a comfort sure. Latin, probably 18th century, translated by Edward Caswall* (1814-1878).
The Latin hymn, 'Quicunque certum quaeritis', is found in a Breviary published at Lisbon in 1786 (Ulysse Chevalier cites a Franciscan Breviary of 1757; see Frost, 1962, p. 193). It was appointed for vespers in the Office of the Sacred Heart, which is referred to in stanza 2, 'ad cor reclusum vulnere,/ ad mite cor, accedite'. Caswall's translation appeared in his Lyra Catholica (1849), with...
All ye that seek the Lord who died. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
First published in Hymns for our Lord's Resurrection (1746), in which it had 12 stanzas. It was the first hymn in the book, a vivid and moving presentation of the first Easter morning. It was not included in the 1780 Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists, and it remained neglected until Hymns and Songs (1969), which printed a four-stanza selection, continued in HP. Stanza 1 in modern texts is made up of...
All ye who seek for sure relief. Latin, probably 18th century, translated by Edward Caswall* (1814-1878).
This is an alternative to 'All ye that seek a comfort sure'*, a variant on Caswall's translation of 'Quicunque certum quaeritis' in his Lyra Catholica (1849). It was set for Vespers and Matins in 'Another Office of the same Feast', referring to 'Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi', the 'Feast of the most sacred heart of Jesus'. It had six stanzas:
All ye who seek a...
Alleluia, song of sweetness. Latin, 11th century or earlier, translated by John Mason Neale* (1818-1866).
This is Neale's translation of 'Alleluya, dulce carmen'*, the hymn used in various rites to mark the pre-season of Lent, normally sung before Septuagesima Sunday, the ninth Sunday before Easter, the third Sunday before Ash Wednesday. It was printed in Neale's Mediaeval Hymns and Sequences (1851), with a preface:
The Latin Church, as is well known, forbade, as a general rule, the use of...
CHATFIELD, Allen William. b. Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, 2 October 1808; d. Much Marcle, Gloucestershire, 10 January 1896. He was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge (BA 1831, MA 1836). He took Holy Orders (deacon 1832, priest 1833), and was vicar of Stotfold, Bedfordshire (1833-47) and of Much Marcle with Yatton, Gloucestershire, Diocese of Hereford (1847-96). He followed John Mason Neale* in his interest in Greek hymnody: he was a remarkable translator from (and into)...
Almighty Father, God of love. Hester Periam Hawkins* (1846-1928).
This hymn was not included in the list of Hawkins' hymns by James Mearns* in Appendix II of JJ (p. 1646). It may have been written after the completion of the Appendix. It is included here because it was the best known of her hymns in America (British books preferred 'Heavenly Father, may thy blessing'*, although the present hymn was in FHB, 1933). The editors would welcome information about the composition and first...
Almighty Father, hear our cry. Edward Henry Bickersteth* (1825-1906).
Written in 1869, this was published in Bickersteth's Hymnal Companion to the Book of Common Prayer* (1870). It was then printed in the Second Edition of A&M (1875) in the section 'For Those at Sea'. It was retained in A&M (1904), and in the Standard Edition of 1922, but dropped from A&MR.
Another version, also dated 1869, was published in Bickersteth's The Two Brothers, and other poems (1871), beginning 'Lord...
Almighty Father, who dost give. John Howard Bertram Masterman* (1867-1933).
First published in In Hoc Signo: hymns of war and peace (1914), with music edited by Walford Davies*. It is eminently suitable for war time, but because the sentiments are general, it can be seen as a hymn for various purposes: after the war of 1914-1918 it came to be seen as a hymn for World Peace and Brotherhood (the heading of the section in which it appears in MHB). It could also be used for missions: it appeared in...
Almighty God, Thy word is cast. John Cawood* (1775-1852).
Written in 1816, and first published in Thomas Cotterill*'s suppressed Eighth Edition of his Selection of Psalms and Hymns for Public Worship (1819), in five stanzas. It was entitled 'After a Sermon'. It was based on Mark 4: 3-9. It was printed in James Montgomery*'s Christian Psalmist (Glasgow, 1825), and other books, including Godfrey Thring*'s A Church of England Hymn Book (1880), and became widely known.
There are two texts of this...
Alone with none but thee, my God. St Columba* (521-597), translated by Duncan MacGregor* (1854-1923).
This was first published in Saint Columba. A Record and a Tribute. To which are added the Altus and some other remains, with offices for the thirteen hundredth anniversary of his death (from ancient sources)(Edinburgh and Aberdeen, 1897), one of the first fruits of MacGregor's scholarly interest in the early Celtic church.It had four stanzas:
Alone with none but thee, my God, I journey on...
Altar Hymnal, The (1884/1885).
The Altar Hymnal was a production of the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England. It was edited by Claudia Frances Hernaman*, Elizabeth Harcourt Mitchell, and Walter Plimpton. The music editor was Arthur Henry Brown*. His name appeared on the title page together with that of Thomas Thellusson Carter (rector of Clewer, Berkshire, and the biographer of John Armstrong*), who provided a brief introduction. That introduction left the reader in no doubt about what...
Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound). John Newton* (1725-1807).
First published in Olney Hymns (1779) Book I, 'On select Passages of Scripture'. It had six Common Metre verses with the title 'Faith's Review and Expectation' and a reference to 1 Chronicles 17: 16-17. Here David exclaims in humble wonder at what the prophet, Nathan, has just said about God's care for him from his early days to his present position as king, a care that would extend to his successors. Newton applies this to his...
CARMICHAEL, Amy Beatrice. b. Millisle, Co Down, Ireland (later Northern Ireland), 16 December 1867; d. Tirunelveli, India, 18 January 1951. She was the eldest of seven children of David Carmichael, a prosperous owner of flour mills, and his wife, Catherine Jane Filson Carmichael. Her father died in April 1885, two years after the family moved to Belfast for business. Under the influence of her devout (Presbyterian) mother, Carmichael became involved in welfare work for the underprivileged from...
An exile for the faith. Nicholas le Tourneaux* (1640-1686), translated by Edward Caswall* and others.
This hymn, 'Iussu tyranni pro fide', is found in the Cluniac Breviary of 1686, for the Festival of St John the Evangelist. It describes the visionary experience recounted in the last book of the Bible; and refers to the tradition, thought improbable, that St John the Apostle and author of the Fourth Gospel, was also the author of Revelation ('of St John the Divine'). A translation by Caswall...
An image of that heavenly light. Latin, 15th Century, translated by Richard Ellis Roberts* (1879-1963).
This is the translation of the Latin hymn, 'Caelestis formam gloriae'* used by EH in preference to the one by John Mason Neale*, 'A type of those bright rays on high'*, which formed the base text for the hymn in the A&M tradition, 'O wondrous type, O vision fair'*. It was the first of four hymns on the Transfiguration in EH, which paid more attention to the Feast of the Transfiguration...
And am I born to die. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
From Hymns for Children (1763), where it had six DCM stanzas. All were reprinted, with minor changes, by John Wesley* in A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists (1780), in spite of (or because of) their uncompromising severity (they are found in the section entitled 'Describing Death', the first of the four Advent themes, Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell). This may be seen in the first three stanzas:
And am I born...
And am I only born to die. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
This hymn is closely related to 'And am I born to die'* in Charles Wesley's Hymns for Children (Bristol, 1763). It is found immediately after it in John Wesley*'s A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists (1780). Much of what is said about that hymn and its suitability for children applies also to the present one.
It had six 6-line stanzas. The child is encouraged to think about life after death, and the possibility...
And are we yet alive. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
First published in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1749), volume II, one of a series of 'Hymns for Christian Friends'. It had four 8-line stanzas:
And are we yet alive, And see Each other's Face?Glory, and Thanks to Jesus give For his Almighty Grace: Preserv'd by Power Divine To full Salvation here,Again in Jesu's Praise we join, And in his Sight appear.
What Troubles have we seen, What mighty Conflicts past,Fightings without, and Fears...
And can it be that I should gain. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
First published in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739) in six 6-line stanzas, with the title 'Free Grace'. It was argued at one time that this was the hymn written by Charles Wesley on his conversion, but that is now thought to have been 'Where shall my wond'ring soul begin'*. This hymn, in the same metre, may have followed shortly after. It is certainly one of the spiritual-autobiographical hymns of this period, and few hymns enable the...
And let our bodies part. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
From Volume II of Charles Wesley's Hymns and Sacred Poems (1749), where it was hymn CCXXXIII, entitled 'At Parting'. It was XLIII in the section entitled 'Hymns for Christian Friends'. It was in two parts: Part I had six 8-line stanzas, Part II four stanzas. Part I was printed, with slight alterations, by John Wesley* in A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists (1780) in 12 four-line stanzas, in the section 'For the...
And now the wants are told, that brought. William Bright* (1824-1901).
First published in Bright's Hymns and Other Poems (1866), in six stanzas. It was almost immediately used in the Appendix (1868) to the First Edition of A&M (1861), where it had a doxology. Beginning with Mark 9: 36, the story of Christ setting a child 'in the midst of them' [the disciples], it portrays very exactly a child's approach to the wonder and mystery of God, although it is a hymn for adults also. Stanza 6,...
And now this holy day. Edward Harland* (1810-1890).
Published in the Supplement (1876) to Harland's Church Psalter and Hymnal (1855). It was included in the Supplement (1889) to the Second Edition of A&M, and thus in A&MS, after which it was omitted from A&MR. It is a hymn for Sunday evening, designated 'For the Young' in both books: its simplicity is appealing, although it expresses an idea of a kind of Sunday that has disappeared, and one that was probably never very popular with...
And now, my soul, another year. Simon Browne* (1680-1732).
This hymn was found in a number of British books in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a shortened form of a dramatic hymn by Browne, from Volume 1 of his Hymns and Spiritual Songs, in Three Books, designed as a Supplement to Dr Watts (1720). It was entitled 'New Year's Day'. The original text is dramatic and revealing:
And now, my soul, another year Of my short life is past: I cannot long continue here, And this may be...
KIPPIS, Andrew. b. Nottingham, 28 March 1725; d. London, 8 October 1795. Kippis was educated (1741-46) at the dissenting academy at Northampton run by Philip Doddridge*. He became a minister, holding charges at Boston, Lincolnshire, and Dorking, Surrey, before becoming the minister of Princes Street Chapel, Westminster in 1753. He remained there until his death, and was regarded as 'the leading Presbyterian minister in the metropolis' (JJ, p. 625). He was a voluminous writer, contributing to...
THOMSON, Andrew Mitchell. b. Sanquhar, Dumfriesshire, 11 July 1779; d. Edinburgh, 9 February 1831. His father was a minister who moved to Markinch, Fife, in 1785, and Andrew was educated at the parish school there and at the University of Edinburgh (1796-99). He was ordained at Sprouston, Roxburghshire (1802), serving there until 1808. He was then minister of the East Church, Perth (1808-10) and New Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh (1810-14), before becoming the first minister of St George's Church...
PRATT, Andrew Edward. b. Paignton, Devon, 28 December 1948. He was educated at Barking Regional College of Technology, London, where he read Zoology, and the University College of North Wales, Bangor, where he obtained an M.Sc. in Marine Biology. He became a teacher, but then decided to train for the Methodist ministry, studying at Queen's College, Birmingham. (1979-82). He has served as a Methodist minister in circuits in Cheshire and Lancashire (Northwich; Nantwich; Leigh and Hindley; Orrell...
REED, Andrew. b. London, 27 November 1787; d. London, 25 February 1862. He was the son of a watchmaker, who was also a lay preacher. He became a watchmaker himself, but sold his tools and entered Hackney College in 1807 to train for the Congregational ministry. He was ordained in 1811 to a chapel at New Road, East London. He built a new chapel called Wycliffe in Commercial Road, Whitechapel, and became minister of the congregation there in 1831; he retired in November 1861, after thirty years...
YOUNG, Andrew. b. Edinburgh, 23 April 1807; d. Edinburgh, 30 November 1889. The son of a schoolteacher, he was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he was an outstanding student. In 1830, at the age of 23, he was appointed by the Town Council of Edinburgh to be headmaster of Niddry Street School, 'where he began with 80 pupils, and left with the total at 600' (JJ, p. 1299). After ten years in this post he became head of English at Madras College, St Andrews (1840-53). He retired to...
Angels lament, behold your God. Charles Coffin* (1676-1749), translated by John Chandler* (1806-1876).
The text by Coffin was in the Paris Breviary, 1736, and in Hymni Sacri Auctor Carolo Coffin (1736). It began 'Lugete, pacis Angeli', and was set for Friday Vespers. It proved attractive to translators, including Isaac Williams*, William John Blew*, Robert Campbell*, John David Chambers*, and David Thomas Morgan* (JJ, pp. 701-2). The compilers of the First Edition of A&M chose Chandler's,...
Angels we have heard on high. French traditional carol, translated by James Chadwick* (1813-1882).
The French carol, in eight stanzas, is printed in the New Oxford Book of Carols (1992), to which this entry is greatly indebted. The original text seems to have been in dialogue form, and the editors of NOBC have arranged it for singing by the Shepherds ('Bergers', stanzas 1, 3, 6) and the Women ('Femmes de Bethlehem', stanzas 2, 4 and 7). Stanzas 5 and 8 were sung by all ('Tous'):
'Les anges...
Anglican Hymn Book (1965) was an attempt to replace the Hymnal Companion to the Book of Common Prayer (Third Edition, 1890) and The Church Hymnal for the Christian Year (1920). It was compiled by a committee appointed by the Church Society, chaired by Canon Herbert Taylor, vicar of Orpington, Kent, and Honorary Canon of Rochester Cathedral. The music editor was Robin Sheldon. It contained 663 hymns, printed in a sans-serif type, unusual in a hymnbook at that time. It is notable for the number...
Liturgical use in early Anglo-Saxon England
No complete hymnal survives from Anglo-Saxon England before the late 10th century. A list given by Thomas of Elmham (early 15th cent.) of the contents of a hymnal purportedly sent to St Augustine of Canterbury by Gregory the Great* seems to suggest a document of considerable antiquity (i.e. possibly authentically Gregorian or at least pre-900 AD) but we cannot be sure of its provenance. We are on firmer ground, however, with two 8th-century...
TAYLOR, Ann and Jane. Ann, b. Islington, London, 30 January 1782, d. Nottingham, 20 December 1866, married name Ann Taylor Gilbert; Jane, b. Islington, 23 September 1783, d. Ongar, Essex, 13 April 1824.
After Isaac Watts* and Charles Wesley*, Ann and Jane Taylor were the most important of the early hymn writers for children. Their Hymns for Infant Minds was first published in 1810 and was a commercial success in Britain and America (by the 1860s, it had gone into nearly 50 editions in America,...
GRIFFITHS, Ann. B. Llanfihangel, Montgomeryshire, April 1776; d. Llanfihangel, August 1805. Ann Thomas was brought up on the farm of Dolwar Fach, Llanfihangel, the daughter of the devout Thomas family who worshipped at the local parish church and who prayed regularly together. She took a full part in local life, and is said to have been frivolous in her youth, much enamoured of dancing, and ready to mock the Methodists. She was only 18 when her mother died and she took over the running of the...
BARBAULD, Anna Letitia (née Aikin). b. Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, 20 June 1743; d. Stoke Newington, London, 9 March 1825. At Kibworth her father was a Presbyterian minister teaching at the dissenting academy (her maternal grandfather, John Jennings, had taught Philip Doddridge* there). In 1753 her father moved to the celebrated Warrington Academy, where she thrived in the cultural and intellectual freedom and began to write, publishing (with her brother John) Poems (1773) and...
COUSIN, Anne Ross (née Cundell). b. Hull, Yorkshire, 27 April 1824; d. Edinburgh, 6 December 1906. The daughter of a Scottish army surgeon, she moved to Leith, near Edinburgh, as a small child. In 1847 she married William Cousin, who became the minister of the Free Church of Scotland at Irvine, Ayrshire, and later Free Church minister of Melrose, Roxburghshire. When at Irvine, she wrote her best known hymn, 'The sands of time are sinking'*. She published a collection of poems, Immanuel's Land...
COGHILL, Annie (Anna) Louisa (née Walker). b. Brewood, Staffordshire, 23 June 1836; d. Bath, Somerset, 7 July 1907. She was the daughter of a civil engineer, who took his family to Canada to work on the railways when Annie was in her 'teens, ca. 1853. She began writing poetry as a child and young woman, and her volume Leaves from the Backwoods was published anonymously in Montreal in 1861. It contained the poem for which she is remembered, 'Work! for the night is coming'*.
The family returned...
Another Sabbath ended. T. Vincent Tymms* (1842-1921).
According to JJ, p. 1190, this was one of the hymns by Tymms printed in the 1880 Supplement to the Baptist Psalms and Hymns of 1858, and in the Baptist Psalms and Hymns for School and Home (n.d.). It was included in the Baptist Church Hymnal (1900), preceded by a quotation: 'The shadows of the evening are stretched out – Jeremiah vi. 4.' It had four graceful stanzas, expressing the ideal of a Sunday that has now disappeared from British...
Another six days' work is done. Joseph Stennett* (1663-1713).
This hymn appeared in fourteen 4-line stanzas in The Works of the Late Reverend and Learned Mr. Joseph Stennett (1732). With alterations, it appeared in a greatly shortened form in several collections, notably the collection by John Ash* and Caleb Evans*, A Collection of Hymns adapted to Public Worship (Bristol, 1769; see Ash and Evans's A Collection of Hymns*), in six stanzas, entitled 'Hymn on the Sabbath'. It crossed the Atlantic...
Another year is dawning. Frances Ridley Havergal* (1836-1879).
According to JJ, p. 72, this was written in 1874 for an ornamental card or leaflet published by a firm called Caswell in 1875 (this publisher has not been found, and it may be an error for Caswell, the part of Swansea where FRH died). It is not in Under the Surface (1874), as JJ goes on to state. In The Poetical Works of Frances Ridley Havergal (1884), edited by her sister Maria, it was included in the section entitled 'New Year...
ANSELM. b. Aosta, Italy, 1033; d. 21 April 1109. Anselm studied under Lanfranc at the Norman abbey of Bec where he became a monk in 1060, prior in 1063, and abbot in 1078. He was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093. A philosopher and theologian, he is famous for formulating the ontological argument for the existence of God: nothing greater than God can be imagined and reality consists of more than what is imagined, therefore God exists in reality. 'Quid commisisti, dulcissime puer'*,...
MURRAY, Anthony Gregory (monastic name) OSB. b. Fulham, London, 27 February 1905; d. 19 January 1992. He was educated at Westminster Cathedral Choir School (1914-20) and St Benedict's Priory School, Ealing (1920-22). He entered Downside Abbey as a monk in 1922, and read History at Cambridge University (1926-29). He was organist and choirmaster at Downside from 1929 to 1941. He was parish priest at Ealing, (1941-46), Hindley, near Wigan, (1948-52), and Stratton on the Fosse (Downside)...
PETTI, Anthony Gaetano Raphael. b. Islington, London, 12 February 1932; d. Calgary, Canada, 13 January 1985. He was educated at St Michael's College, Hitchin, Hertfordshire (1941-45) and St Ignatius' College, London (1945-50). After National Service he read English at University College, London (BA 1955, MA 1957), teaching at the College from 1960 to 1969. He was Professor of English, University of Calgary, Canada, from 1969 until his early and sudden death.
Petti was a specialist in medieval...
CHARTERIS, Archibald Hamilton. b. Wamphray, Dumfiesshire, Scotland, 13 December 1835; d. Edinburgh, 24 April 1908. He was educated at Wamphray, and at the University of Edinburgh (MA, 1852). He became minister of New Abbey, south of Dumfries, and of the Park Church, Glasgow, built in 1858, and now sadly demolished. In those years he wrote The Life of the Rev. James Robertson, formerly Professor of Divinity and Ecclesiastical History at Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1863). He gave speeches and preached...
Arm of the Lord, awake, awake (Shrubsole). William Shrubsole (II)* (1759-1829).
According to JJ, William Shrubsole (II) was a Director and one of the Secretaries of the London Missionary Society, founded in 1795. In the same year this hymn appeared in Missionary Hymns (JJ, p. 1056). It was included in John Dobell*'s New Selection of Seven Hundred Evangelical Hymns (1810), with the title 'Zion's Increase prayed for…...Isaiah li. 9.':
Arm of the Lord, awake! awake! Put on Thy strength, the...
BROOKS, Arnold. b. Edgbaston, Birmingham, 25 December 1870; d. Edinburgh, 2 July 1933. Brooks was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (BA 1893, MA 1897). After serving a curacy at Bermondsey, London (1897-99), he moved to Scotland and to the Scottish Episcopal Church, becoming a 'licensed curate' of St Peter's, Lutton Place, Edinburgh (1899-1905), and then of St John's, Princes Street, Edinburgh (1905- 09). He was priest-in-charge of St...
THOMAS, (Henry) Arnold. b. Clifton, Bristol, 13 June 1848; d. Sneyd Park, Bristol, 28 June 1924. The son of the minister of Highbury Chapel, Bristol (Congregational), he was educated at Mill Hill School, University College, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He assisted his father at Highbury Chapel before training for the Congregational ministry at New College, London. He was ordained to pastorates at Burntash, Lewisham, London (1873-74) and Ealing (1874-76); but 'it was fore-ordained...
Art thou weary, art thou languid. John Mason Neale* (1818-1866), based on a Greek text by St Stephen the Sabaite (725-794).
This translation of a Greek text, 'Kopon te kai kamaton', was first printed in Neale's Hymns of the Eastern Church (1862), where it is assigned to the 'Second Epoch' of Greek hymnody (726-820) and described as 'Idiomela in the week of the First Oblique Tone'. Neale wrote: 'These Stanzas, which strike me as very sweet, are not in all the editions of the Octoechos' (Third...
BROWN, Arthur Henry. b. Brentwood, Essex, 24 July 1830; d. Brentwood, 15 February 1926. A self-taught musician, he grew up in Brentwood playing the organ at the parish church, where, apart from a brief interval as organist in nearby Romford (1853-58), he remained for 40 years (1842-53 and 1858-88). It is not known when he became organist of Sir Anthony Browne's School in Brentwood, although a letter from Brown to the headmaster dated 8th Feb 1918 thanks him for his share 'in the very gratifying...
MANN, Arthur Henry. b. Norwich, 16 May 1850; d. Cambridge, 19 November 1929. He was a chorister at Norwich Cathedral and then an articled pupil of Zechariah Buck. He held the positions of organist at St Peter's Church, Wolverhampton (1870), Tettenhall Parish Church (1871) and Beverley Minster (1875) before he was appointed organist of King's College, Cambridge in 1876. He remained in this post for the rest of his life.
Mann did much for Cambridge music. He oversaw the change of regime in which...
HUTCHINGS, Arthur James Bramwell. b. Sunbury-on-Thames, 14 July 1906; d. 13 November 1989. Before the Second World War, in which he served with the Royal Air Force, Hutchings was a schoolmaster and organist, and a contributor to music periodicals. After the war he was Professor of Music at the University of Durham (1947-68) and the University of Exeter (1968-71). He retired to Colyton, Devon. His publications included Schubert (1941, 5th Edition, 1978); Edmund Rubbra (1941), Delius (Paris,...
JONES, Arthur Morris. b. 1899; d. 1980. He was a missionary and musicologist, educated at Keble College, Oxford, and Wells Theological College. He took Holy Orders (deacon 1922, priest 1923) and served curacies at Ashford, Kent (1922-24) and St Michael and All Angels, Maidstone, Kent (1924-28). In 1929 he became a missionary in what was then Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. He took up a post as Warden of St Mark's Teachers' Training College, under the auspices of the Universities' Mission to...
SULLIVAN, (Sir) Arthur Seymour. b. London, 13 May 1842; d. London, 22 November 1900. Born in Lambeth, he was the son of an Irish bandmaster. He became a chorister in the Chapel Royal in 1854 and entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1856 where he studied under William Sterndale Bennett*. Between 1858 and 1861 he was a student at the Leipzig Conservatory where he gained notable approbation for his incidental music to The Tempest. After returning to England he made his living as an organist in...
SOMERVELL, (Sir) Arthur. b. Windermere, Cumbria, 5 June 1863; d. London, 2 May 1937. Somervell was a composer and educationist, the youngest of six sons and nine children of Robert Miller Somervell, leather merchant and founder of Somervell Brothers (manufacturers of K (for 'Kendal') Shoes), and Anne Wilson. He was educated for one year at Uppingham School (1878-9) and then at King's College, Cambridge (BA 1884), where he also studied composition under Charles Villiers Stanford*. At Stanford's...
WARRELL, Arthur Sydney. b. Farmborough near Bath, 1882; d. Bristol, 12 August 1939. He was educated at Farmborough and at the Merchant Venturers' Technical College in Bristol. He was assistant organist at Bristol Cathedral (where he worked under Hubert Hunt) and was latterly organist of Clifton Parish Church. He was appointed Lecturer in Music at Bristol University in 1909. There he founded the University Choir, Orchestra and Madrigal Singers, and became known for his prowess as an educator....
As now the sun's declining rays. Charles Coffin* (1676-1749), translated by John Chandler* (1806-1876).
Coffin's hymn, beginning 'Labente jam solis rota' was written for the revised Paris Breviary of 1736, edited by the Archbishop of Paris, Charles-Gaspard de Vintimille, who encouraged Coffin to write new Latin hymns. It was set for the service of None. It was published in the same year as the Breviary in Hymni Sacri Auctore Carolo Coffin (1736).
John Chandler's translation appeared in his...
As pants the hart for cooling streams. Nahum Tate* (1652-1715) and Nicholas Brady* (1659-1726). This is Psalm 42 in A New Version of the Psalms of David by Tate and Brady [New Version*] (1696, 1698). It had 11 stanzas, corresponding to the 11 verses of the psalm. Most books abbreviate the original to produce a text of fewer stanzas: almost all hymnbooks begin with stanzas 1 and 2 ('As pants the hart' and 'For Thee, my God, the living God') and end with stanza 11 ('Why restless, why cast down,...
As the bridegroom to his chosen. John Tauler* (ca. 1300-1361), translated by Emma Frances Bevan* (1827-1909). This hymn appeared in the first series of Frances Bevan's Hymns of Ter Steegen, Suso and Others (1894-97). To date no specific text by Tauler has been identified, and the hymn is thought to have been a paraphrase of some of his ideas, perhaps those preached in a sermon at a nunnery, which referred to the bridegroom. It was reprinted in Bevan's Hymns of Ter Steegen, Suso and Others...
As the fainting deer cries out. David George Preston* (1939- ).
This version of Psalm 42 was one of the last texts written for The Book of Praises: 70 Psalms for singing today, which the author compiled in 1986. It was paired from then on with his version of Psalm 43, 'God defend me; traitors rise'. As the two Psalms have much in common, including their refrain, and because they may have been a single song which was later divided, Preston has rendered them in the same 7777D metre and given...
The informal phrase 'assembly bangers' came into usage in the early 2020s in the United Kingdom to describe a body of hymns and other songs that were widely sung in primary school assemblies in the 1980s and 1990s. The phrase draws on the wider use of 'banger' as a slang term, defined in Merriam-Webster's dictionary as 'an energetic song that is very striking or extraordinary'. The phrase was seemingly coined by British music teacher James B. Partridge, who recorded a series of videos on the...
At break of day three women came. Janet Wootton* (1952- ).
This was originally published in Hymns and Congregational Songs Vol. 2 No.1 (1990) and then unaltered in Story Song and Reflecting Praise (both 1993). The hymn was originally set to STOURBRIDGE (anonymous but arranged by June Boyce-Tillman*). Two versions of the text are offered, one for this tune and the other for KINGSFOLD. This latter shortens the penultimate line of each stanza, so in stanza 1 'They worship in the light of day'...
At the cross her station keeping. Latin, probably 13th century, translated by Edward Caswall* (1814-1878), Richard Mant* (1776-1848) and others.
This is a translation of 'Stabat Mater dolorosa'*, which in its Latin original is of unknown authorship. It has been attributed to Pope Innocent III (1161-1216), but recent editions of A&M and EH ascribe it to Jacopone da Todi* (died 1306). For the arguments about authorship, see JJ, p. 1082.
There are two versions of the Latin hymn: the full...
At the Lamb's high feast we sing. Latin, Roman Breviary, 1632, translated by Robert Campbell* (1814-1868).
This Easter Communion hymn is a translation of 'Ad regias Agni dapes'*, a hymn in the Roman Breviary (1632) derived from 'Ad cenam Agni providi'* (pre-8th-century). Campbell's translation appeared in his Hymns and Anthems for Use in the Holy Services of the Church within the United Diocese of St Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblane (Edinburgh, 1850). It was then printed with alterations in the...
At thy feet, O Christ, we lay. William Bright* (1824-1901).
First published in the Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Members of the English Church (October 1867), and then in the Second Edition of Bright's Hymns and Other Poems (1874). It became widely known after its printing in the Second Edition of A&M (1875). It is a morning hymn, meditating upon human weakness, but its simplicity of line, and the rhyming couplets, also make it suitable for children. It has been frequently...
At Thy feet, our God and Father. James Drummond Burns* (1823-1864).
According to JJ, p. 1551, this was first published in The Family Treasury, presumably a Christian periodical, in 1861 (Gordon Bell notes 'July'). It later appeared in the Presbyterian Church of England's Psalms and Hymns for Divine Worship (1867), and in James Hamilton's Memoir and Remains of the Rev James D. Burns (1869). The text in 1869 was entitled 'New Year's Hymn', and was preceded by '“Thou crownest the year with thy...
RILEY, John Athelstan Laurie. b. Paddington, London, 10 August 1858; d. Jersey, Channel Islands, 17 November 1945. He was the son of a successful barrister, of Yorkshire stock: educated at Eton and Pembroke College, Oxford, which he left without taking a degree. He spent much time travelling in Europe and the Near East, publishing Athos; or, the Mountain of the Monks, in 1887. He was an active Anglo-Catholic: he wrote a preface to a book by his friend William John Birkbeck*, Why I am an...
DE VERE, Aubrey (Thomas). b. Curragh Chase, Co. Limerick, Ireland, 10 January 1814; d. Curragh Chase, 21 January 1902. Born into the landed gentry (his mother was a Spring-Rice), he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin (1832- ), after which he travelled widely and succeeded in meeting many of the remarkable people of his time, such as William Wordsworth*, John Henry Newman*, and Alfred Tennyson*. As a result of his travels in Europe, he published two early books, The Waldenses, and Other...
TOPLADY, Augustus Montague. b. Farnham, Surrey, 4 November 1740; d. Kensington, London, 11 August 1778. He was the son of an army officer, Richard Toplady, who was killed at the siege of Carthagena in 1741. He was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Dublin. He was converted by a travelling Methodist preacher, James Morris, and was associated with the Methodists until he began to differ from John Wesley* because of his (Toplady's) strong adherence to Calvinist views. He took Holy...
Awake, my soul! lift up thine eyes. Anna Letitia Barbauld* (1743-1825).
First published in her friend William Enfield*'s Hymns for Public Worship: selected from various authors, and intended as a supplement to Dr Watts's Psalms (Warrington, 1772), entitled 'The Conflict'. It had six stanzas:
Awake, my soul, lift up thine eyes;See where thy foes against thee rise,In long array, a numerous host;Awake my soul, or thou art lost.
Here giant danger threat'ning standsMustering his pale terrific...
Awake, my soul, and with the sun. Thomas Ken* (1637-1711).
Ken's three hymns for morning, evening and midnight were included as an appendix to the 1695 edition of A Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Scholars of Winchester College, having previously circulated in pamphlet form. The date and place of writing are uncertain. The 1674 edition of the Manual of Prayers contains the direction to the boys 'be sure to sing the Morning and Evening Hymn in your chamber devoutly'. It is possible that...
Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve. Philip Doddridge* (1702-1751).
This was hymn CCXCVI in Doddridge's Hymns Founded on Various Texts in the Holy Scriptures (1755). This was headed 'Pressing on in the Christian Race. Phil. iii. 12-14.' It was a variant on the common 'Awake, my soul' theme', distinguished from other examples by its exhortation to zeal and vigour:
Awake, my Soul, stretch ev'ry Nerve And press with Vigour on: A heav'nly Race demands thy Zeal, And an immortal Crown.
While...
Away with our fears/ Our troubles and tears. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
From Hymns of Petition and Thanksgiving for the Promise of the Father. By the Reverend Mr. John and Charles Wesley (Bristol, 1746), where it was Hymn XXXII, the last in the book. It had five 8-line stanzas:
Away with our Fears, Our Troubles and Tears! The Spirit is come, The Witness of Jesus Return'd to hs Home: The Pledge of our Lord To his Heaven restor'd, Is sent from the Sky, And tells us our...
Away with our sorrow and fear. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
Funeral Hymns (1744), a small book of 24 pages, contained 16 hymns. It was dated by JJ, p. 1259, as 1744, but by the modern editors of A Collection of Hymns (1780) as 1746 (Hildebrandt and Beckerlegge, 1983; no copy dated 1744 has been found). The text in 1746 was as follows:
Away with our Sorrow and Fear! We soon shall recover our Home; The City of Saints shall appear, The Day of Eternity come; From Earth we shall quickly...
Baptists in England were divided into two main groupings until the end of the 19th century: the General Baptists, who were Arminian in theology, and the Particular Baptists, who were Calvinist. These groupings reflected different historical origins, and different theologies and practices, including attitudes to congregational singing. Most churches of both groups formed the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland (now the Baptist Union of Great Britain — BUGB) in the 19th century, though a...
NOEL, The Hon. Baptist Wriothesley. b. Edinburgh, 10 July 1799; d. Stanmore, Middlesex, 19 January 1873. Born into a noble family (see Burke's Peerage, 1939, p. 1055; the name 'Baptist' was common in the family), he was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge (MA 1821). He studied law, and entered Lincoln's Inn, but against the wishes of his family he became an Anglican priest, curate of Cossington, Leicestershire, and then minister of a proprietary chapel in London (St...
Baptized in water. Michael Saward* (1932-2015).
This was the second of three hymns for baptism written within four days, and the third of four used in a teaching series on the subject when the author was vicar of Ealing in West London. Like others, he had become concerned at the dearth of convincing and singable hymns for baptism. The date of writing this one was 29 May 1981; the following year all four were published in HFTC of which he was the words editor, together with two by Michael Perry*...
ROSE, Barry Michael. b. Chingford, Essex, 24 May 1934. A choir trainer of quite exceptional gifts, Rose was appointed the first organist of the new and as yet unfinished cathedral at Guildford in March 1960. He built up one of the country's finest cathedral choirs there, and had a similarly beneficial effect on the singing at St Paul's Cathedral (1974-84), where he was initially Sub-Organist and subsequently Master of the Choir. After an interlude as Master of the Choirs at the King's School,...
BRIDGE, Basil Ernest. b. Norwich, 5 August 1927; d. Norwich, 11 September 2021. He was educated at the City of Norwich School and Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge (BA, 1948). He trained for the Congregational ministry at Cheshunt College, and was ordained in 1951. He served in Congregational (after 1972 United Reformed Church) churches at Knowle, Warwickshire (1951-55), Leicester (1955-74), Stamford and Bourne, Lincolnshire (1976-89), and Harrold, Bedforshire (1989-94). He has written over 30 texts...
HARWOOD, Basil. b. Woodhouse, Olveston, Gloucestershire, 11 April 1859; d. Kensington, London, 3 April 1949. He was the eighth son and youngest of nine children of Edward Harwood, banker and JP, and his first wife, Mary Sturge (daughter of Young Sturge of Bristol, the famous Quaker). He entered Trinity College, Oxford in 1878 to study classics and history and also took the B.Mus. degree in 1880, studying theory with C. W. Corfe, choragus to the university. After leaving Oxford he travelled to...
WOODD, Basil. b. Richmond, Surrey, 5 August 1760; d. Paddington Green, London, 12 April 1831. Woodd was educated by a clergyman and then at Trinity College, Oxford (BA 1782, MA 1785). He took Holy Orders (deacon 1783, priest 1784), becoming 'lecturer' (preacher) at St Peter's, Cornhill, London (1784-1808). In 1785 he became preacher at Bentinck Chapel, Marylebone, London, a proprietary chapel that he purchased in 1793. He was also chaplain to the Marquis Townshend, and rector of Drayton...
BBC Songs of Praise was published in 1997. It traced its origins from two sources: the original Songs of Praise (SofP, 1925, SofPE, 1931), and the popular BBC television programme, 'Songs of Praise', in which congregations from various parts of the British Isles were seen, and individuals were invited to choose hymns. That programme, in the words of the Preface, 'has made churchgoers aware of songs and hymns from beyond their individual traditions, and has been able to popularize newer music on...
Be still, for the presence of the Lord. David J. Evans* (1957- ).
This was written in 1985, when Evans was involved in leading worship in what he himself describes as 'new' churches (Companion to Church Hymnal, Fifth Edition, 2005, p. 458). It was sung at Spring Harvest occasions, and published in Let's Praise 1 (1988). It became hugely successful, and has appeared in many books, such as Worship Songs Ancient & Modern (1992), with the first line changed to 'Be still, for the Spirit of the...
Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side. Katharina Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel* (1697-?), translated by Jane Laurie Borthwick* (1813-1897).
This is a translation of the German text, 'Stille, mein Wille; dein Jesus hilft siegen', published in Neue Sammlung geistlicher Lieder ('A New Collection of Spiritual Songs') (Wernigerode, 1752). It was published in Hymns from the Land of Luther, Second Series (Edinburgh, 1855), where it was entitled 'Submission', followed by the quotation '“In your...
Beauty for brokenness. Graham Kendrick* (1950- ).
This song was written in 1993 for the 25th anniversary of the charity Tearfund. It was influenced by a visit that Kendrick had made to India in 1992 and his perception of the contrast between Indian poverty and Western affluence. It was included in his CD album Spark to a Flame (1993), and has since been included in a number of mainstream hymn books, including the Australian Together in Song: The Australian Hymn Book II (1999), Sing...
BEDE [the Venerable]. b. 673/4; d. 26 May 735. Bede was born in Northumberland and, at the age of seven, was given by his family to Benedict Biscop, abbot of St Peter at Wearmouth, for his education. In 682, when Biscop founded the brother monastery of St Paul at Jarrow, Bede was sent to join the new community under its abbot Ceolfrith; he remained there for the rest of his life.
Bede dedicated himself to teaching and writing, never travelling beyond Northumbria. The monasteries of Wearmouth...
Before I take the body of my Lord. John Lamberton Bell* (1949- ) and Graham Maule* (1958-2019).
From Love from Below (Wild Goose Songs 3) (1989), where the title is 'These I lay down'. It was written for a Thursday night Eucharist at Iona Abbey, in which the participants are seated round tables rather than facing the altar. It is a hymn of confession, although John Bell is on record as saying that he sometimes feels that 'we overdose ourselves in confession' at Holy Communion (Companion to...
Before the ending of the day. Latin, 5th-7th century, translated by Robert Campbell* (1814-1868) and John Mason Neale* (1818-1866).
The translations of the Latin 'Te lucis ante terminum'* by these two authors are the best known of many English versions. Campbell's appeared in Hymns and Anthems for Use in the Holy Services of the Church within the United Diocese of St Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblane (Edinburgh, 1850). Neale's appeared two years later in The Hymnal Noted Part 1 (1851). Neale's...
Before the world's foundation. Timothy Dudley-Smith (1926- ).
This hymn was written in 1998. Like many of Dudley-Smith's hymns, it was his response to a commission. The Methodist Publishing House, which traced its history back to the time of John Wesley*, had moved from London to Peterborough in 1988. Its Chief Executive, Brian Thornton, planned a Service of Thanksgiving to mark ten years since the move, and Dudley-Smith responded to a request for a hymn to be sung to mark the occasion (2003,...
Begone my worldly cares, away. Susanna Harrison* (1752-1784).
This hymn that looks forward to Sunday was Hymn V in Songs of the Night (1780). It was entitled 'Saturday Night'. It is an original meditation on the holy joys of a religious Sunday. It had six stanzas:
Begone my worldly cares, away! Nor dare to tempt my sight;Let me begin th'ensuing day Before I end this night.
Yes, let the work of prayer and praise Employ my heart and tongue; Begin my soul! - Thy sabbath days Can never be...
Behold a broken world, we pray. Timothy Dudley-Smith* (1926-2024).
In 1984 the Hymn Society of America (now The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada*) announced a hymn search on the theme of 'Peace'. Rooting his text firmly in Micah 4:1-4, Dudley-Smith wrote this in August that year, and it was one of five chosen for publication, appearing in the society's journal The Hymn in July 1985. Like many of the author's hymns, it was put together during the morning hours devoted to...
Behold a Stranger at the door. Joseph Grigg* (ca. 1720-1768).
From Grigg's Four Hymns on Divine Subjects; Wherein the Patience and Love of our divine Saviour is displayed (1765), where it was a hymn of eleven 4-line stanzas:
Behold a Stranger at the door! He gently knocks, has knocked before, Has waited long, is waiting still; You treat no other friend so ill.
But will He prove a friend indeed? He will; the very Friend you need; The Friend of sinners--yes 'tis He, With garments dyed on...
Behold the great Creator makes. Thomas Pestel* (1586-1667).
First published in Pestel's Sermons and Devotions, Old and New (1659), where it forms verses from 'A Psalm for Christmass day morning'. This begins:
Fairest of morning Lights appear, Thou blest and gaudy day,On whom was born our Saviour dear, Make haste and come away.
The hymn begins at verse 5 of this poem, and in its usual form continues to the end (verse 9). It was included in EH, set to the 15th-century tune THIS ENDRIS NYGHT,...
Behold the Lamb of God. Matthew Bridges* (1800-1894).
From Bridges's Hymns of the Heart, for the use of Catholics (1848), where it was entitled 'Ecce Agnus Dei' (many of the hymns in that collection had Latin titles). It had seven 7-line stanzas, based on John 1: 29. Because, as JJ pointed out (p.129), the hymn is rarely printed in this form, the original text is printed here:
Behold the Lamb! Oh! Thou for sinners slain, - Let it not be in vain, That Thou hast died: Thee for my Saviour let...
Behold the sun that seemed but now. George Wither* (1588-1667).
First published in Haleluiah, or Britan's second Remembrancer (1641), in the section 'Hymns Occasionall'. Wither hoped, as his prefatory note stated, that a meditation at sunset on the lines of this hymn 'may perhaps expel unprofitable musings, and arm against the terrors of approaching darkness': hence its theme of the decline or sunset of physical life, and the hope of spiritual life:
Behold the sun that seemed but now Enthronèd...
Behold we come, dear Lord, to Thee. John Austin* (1613-1669).
First published in Austin's Devotions in the Antient Way of Offices (Paris, 1668) in seven 4-line stanzas, where it was the first hymn in 'The Office for Sunday', appointed for Matins on Sunday. John Wesley* used stanzas 1-6 in his first hymnbook, A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (Charlestown, 1737), omitting the final stanza. Austin's original text was:
Behold we come, dear Lord, to Thee, And bow before Thy throne;We come to...
Behold! the mountain of the Lord. Michael Bruce* (?) (1746-1767).
This is paraphrase 18, of Isaiah 2: 2-6, in the Scottish Psalter (1929). An earlier version was included in the Scottish Translations and Paraphrases (1745) beginning 'In latter days the mount of God,/ His sacred House, shall rise' (annotated under this heading in JJ, pp. 564-5). The present version was published by John Logan* in Poems. By the Rev. Mr. Logan, One of the Ministers of Leith (1781), and printed in the same year in...
The Believers Hymn Book, with supplement, for use at Assemblings of the Lord's People, was published in 1959. It is the most recent edition of The Believers Hymn Book of 1884. The title has no apostrophe. See Brethren hymnody, British*.
From 1 to 326 the hymns are arranged alphabetically. From 327 to 360 they appear in random order. From 361 ('All hail the power of Jesu's name'*) to 464 ('Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim'*) the hymns are again arranged alphabetically, followed by a...
Believing fathers oft have told. Archibald Hamilton Charteris* (1835- 1908).
This was written in 1889 on a steamer on Lake Como, Italy, where Charteris was presumably on holiday from his duties as a Professor of Biblical Criticism at the University of Edinburgh. It was written for the Young Man's Guild, of which Charteris was a founder, and published in the August number of The Guild Magazine in the same year. It was entitled 'Guild Hymn'. It was a long hymn of five 8-line stanzas, each of...
BEDDOME, Benjamin. b. Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire, 23 January 1717; d. Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, 3 September 1795. He was the son of a Baptist minister. He intended to become a doctor, and was apprenticed to a Bristol surgeon; but he moved to London and became a member of the Prescott Street Baptist Church in 1739. At that church he was called to the ministry, and in 1740 he moved to Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire. He remained there as Baptist pastor for the remainder of...
BRITTEN, (Edward) Benjamin. b. Lowestoft, Suffolk, 22 November 1913; d. Aldeburgh, Suffolk, 4 December 1976. Britten was educated at South Lodge Preparatory School, Lowestoft, and at Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk, before winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1930 where his composition tutor was John Ireland*. From 1927, however, he was taught privately by Frank Bridge and these lessons continued throughout his years at the College, where he was also taught the piano by Arthur...
CARR, Benjamin. b. London, 12 September 1768; d. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 24 May 1831. Born in London, Carr was descended from a family of musicians and music publishers from the late 17th century. He studied with his father, Joseph Carr (1739-1819), who operated a music repository in Middle Row, Holborn, and with the composers Samuel Arnold* and Charles Wesley (II)*. Carr was first taken into his father's business, then opened his own shop in London and embarked upon a career as a singer,...
FRANCIS, Benjamin. b. Wales, 1734; d. Horsley, Gloucestershire, 14 December 1799. Francis was a Welsh speaker, who wrote hymns in Welsh and English, and edited a Welsh hymnbook (Aleluia: neu Hymnau perthynol I addoliad cyhoeddus, Caerfyrddin, 1774). JJ, p. 386, lists five hymns in Welsh that were in use in 1892. He trained at the Baptist College, Bristol, and served as a minister at Sodbury (Old Sodbury and Chipping Sodbury), Gloucestershire, and then, from 1757 to 1799, at Horsley, near...
KENNEDY, Benjamin Hall. b. Summer Hill, Tipton, near Birmingham, 6 November 1804; d. Torquay, Devon, 6 April 1889. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham (1814-18) and then at Shrewsbury School (1819-23), followed by St John's College, Cambridge (BA 1827). At Cambridge he was an outstanding figure, winning many of the University Prizes, becoming President of the Union, and being a member of the 'Apostles' (the intellectual society that included such figures as Arthur Hallam and...
INGHAM, Benjamin. b. Ossett, Yorkshire, 11 June 1712; d. Aberford Hall, near Tadcaster, Yorkshire, 2 December 1772. He was educated at Batley Grammar School and Queen's College, Oxford (1730-34), where he became acquainted with Charles Wesley* and was associated with the Oxford Methodists (his diary of these years was edited by Heitzenrater, 1985). He was persuaded by the Wesley brothers to accompany them to Georgia; his letter describing the voyage is printed in Heitzenrater (2003). In Georgia...
JONSON, Benjamin (Ben). b. (probably) London, June 1573; d. London, August 1637. His father died shortly after he was born, but his mother married a prosperous bricklayer, a trade to which Jonson himself was apprenticed. However, he had also been educated at Westminster School under William Camden, and was well trained in Latin and Greek and Hebrew. He fought in the campaign in the Netherlands (1591-92), before becoming an actor in a travelling company, and beginning to write his early plays,...
KEACH, Benjamin. b. Stoke Hammond, near Leighton Buzzard, Buckinghamshire, 29 February 1640; d. London, 18 July 1704. He was apprenticed to a tailor. His early reading and experience inclined him towards Calvinism and adult baptism, and by 1658 he was preaching and ministering to a Baptist congregation at Winslow, Buckinghamshire. In 1664 he published The Child's Instructor, a book which contained not only the basic educational information (reading, writing, arithmetic) but also material...
MILGROVE, Benjamin. b. Bath, 1731; d. Bath, 1810. Little is known of Milgrove's life, except that he was precentor and organist of the Countess of Huntingdon's Chapel at Bath, and the keeper of a fancy goods shop. Wesley Milgate reports that he was a 'proprietor' or investor in John Wesley*'s New King Street Chapel in Bath to the tune of £100, a considerable sum at that time (Songs of the People of God, 1992, p. 293). He ceased to be a proprietor in 1787, perhaps because of the increasing...
RHODES, Benjamin. b. Mexborough, Yorkshire, 1743, date unknown; d. Margate, Kent, 13 October 1815. He was the son of a schoolmaster, who gave him a good education. At the age of 11 he was much influenced by hearing George Whitefield* preach, and in 1766 he became one of 'Mr Wesley's preachers', serving until his death at Margate. In the obituary in the Minutes of the Methodist Conference he was described as 'a man of great simplicity and integrity of mind; he was warmly and invariably attached...
WAUGH, Benjamin. b. Settle, Yorkshire, 20 February 1839; d. Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, 11 March 1908. He left school at 14, and was apprenticed to a linen draper in Southport; but at 23 he entered Airedale College, Bradford, to train for the Congregational ministry (1862-65). He served at Newbury, Berkshire (1865-66), Greenwich, London (1866-85), and New Southgate, Middlesex (1885-87). While at Greenwich he became interested in the welfare of children, and in 1887 he resigned from the full-time...
FARRELL, Bernadette. b. Altofts, West Yorkshire, 1957. Farrell was educated at King's College London and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She quickly made her mark as one of the founder members of the St Thomas More Group*. She has worked as diocesan music advisor for Southwark and Westminster and as a workshop presenter both in the UK and in the USA. Her ministry flows in to social action and reflects her strong commitment to justice and peace. In addition to her work with the St...
BARTON, Bernard. b. Carlisle, 31 January 1784; d. Woodbridge, Suffolk, 19 February 1849. Born into a Quaker family, he was the son of a manufacturer. His mother died a few days after he was born, and his father married again, moving to London and then Hertford. Bernard was sent to a Quaker school at Ipswich, where he learned the principles of business and trade. In 1806 he moved to Woodbridge, Suffolk, where he was a partner in a coal and coke business. He married in 1807, but his wife died in...
MANNING, Bernard Lord. b. Caistor, Lincolnshire, 31 December 1892; d. Cambridge, 8 December 1941. The 'Lord' in Manning's name was a given name at his Baptism, not a peerage. He was the son of a Wesleyan Methodist, George Manning, who later became a Congregational minister. His son also became a member of the Congregational Church.
Manning was educated at Caistor Grammar School and Jesus College, Cambridge. He became a bye-Fellow at Magdalene College (1916-1918) and was elected a Fellow of...
MASSEY, Bernard Stanford. b. Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, 22 June 1927; d. Redhill, Surrey, 28 October 2011. He was educated at Watford Boys' Grammar School and Queen Mary College, University of London. From 1952 to 1984 he was successively Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader, and Tutor in the Mechanical Engineering Department, University College, London; he was the author of three text-books.
Massey was the editor of the Bulletin of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland from 1975 to...
TOURS, Berthold. b. Rotterdam, 17 December 1838; d. Hammersmith, London, 11 March 1897. His father, Barthélemy Tours, was organist of St Laurence Church, Rotterdam. After early lessons with his father and from Johannes Verhulst he studied at the Brussels and Leipzig Conservatoires before spending two years in Russia (1859-61) in the service of Prince George Galitsin. In 1861 he settled in London as a violinist, writer and teacher and in 1862 was appointed organist of the Swiss Church, Holborn....
Beyond all mortal praise. Timothy Dudley-Smith* (1926-2024).
Written in August 1981. The first line and the metre 66.66.44.44. (the metre of the 148th Psalm in the 'Old Version'*) may seem at first sight to recall 'We give immortal praise'* by Isaac Watts*. But while Watts's hymn is on the Holy Trinity, Dudley-Smith's is based on Daniel 2: 20-23, in which Daniel and his companions desired 'mercies of the God of heaven' that would enable them to interpret Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Daniel's prayer...
Bibliotheca Hymnologica is the title of a bookseller's catalogue of the above date. The bookseller was Charles Higham (1845-1920), who had a shop in Farringdon Street, London, specializing in theological literature. During the late 1880s he acquired, mainly through a series of deaths of hymnbook collectors, a vast collection of hymnals and related books, which he offered for sale ('the whole now on sale, FOR CASH'). The accumulated contents of the catalogue were described on its title page as...
TAMBLYN, Bill. b. Birmingham, 5 December 1941. He was educated at University College, Durham, during which time he began to study plainchant with Fr Laurence Hollis at Ushaw College and converted to Roman Catholicism. On leaving university, he became, first, cantor and then for ten years, director of music at Our Lady of Grace and St Edward, Chiswick, West London. Tamblyn edited Church Music until 1974, and during the late 1960s he travelled with John Michael East (director of the Church Music...
Bind us together, Lord. Robert (Bob) Gillman* (1946— ).
'Bind us together, Lord' grew out of the controversy that developed over the impact of Pentecostal influences in churches in London during the 1970s, known as the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Those who had experienced the presence of the gifts of the Spirit wished for congregations with established historical liturgies to allow for more freedom to express these gifts during worship. As a result, a house church movement developed during...
Blessed city, heavenly Salem. Latin, probably 7th century, translated by John Mason Neale* (1818-1866).
This is a translation of the Latin hymn 'Urbs beata Ierusalem'*, found in manuscripts of the 11th century, but probably of greater antiquity, perhaps 6th or 7th century (see JJ, p. 1198-9). The translation was first published in Neale's Mediaeval Hymns and Sequences (1851), in nine stanzas. In The Hymnal Noted Part I (1851) it was divided into two hymns, the first beginning as above, the...
Blessed Jesus, here we stand. Benjamin Schmolck* (1672-1737), translated by Catherine Winkworth* (1827-1878).
Schmolck's hymn, 'Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, deinem Worte nachzuleben'*, was published in his Heilige Flammen der Himmlisch-gesinnten Seele (Third Edition, 1706) in seven 6-line verses, entitled 'Seasonable Reflections of the sponsors on their way with the child to Baptism'. Winkworth translated six verses for Lyra Germanica II (1858), where it appeared as the first hymn in the...
Blest be the dear uniting love. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
First published in eight stanzas in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742), where it was entitled 'At Parting':
Blest be the dear, Uniting Love That will not let us part:Our Bodies may far off remove, We still are join'd in heart.
Join'd in One Spirit to our Head, Where He appoints we go,And still in Jesu's Footsteps tread, And do His Work below.
O let us ever walk in Him, And Nothing know beside,Nothing desire, Nothing esteem But...
Blest is the man whose softening heart. Anna Letitia Barbauld* (1743-1825).
This text is taken from the hymn beginning 'Behold, where breathing love divine'*, first published in her friend William Enfield*'s Hymns for Public Worship: selected from various authors, and intended as a supplement to Dr Watts's Psalms (Warrington, 1772), where it was entitled 'Christian Charity'. It had eight stanzas. The present hymn starts at stanza 3. It was published in Barbauld's Poems (1773) as 'Hymn IV'...
Gillman, Robert (Bob). b. West Ham, London, 16 June 1946. Bob Gillman received his education in the Borough of West Ham, including the local Catholic Junior School followed by South West Ham Technical School, finishing his education at Abbs Cross Technical School in Hornchurch. Retired now, his career included performing, composing, and pursuing his interest in steam-driven trains while managing a printing company. After passing the qualifying exams, Gillman worked for the London Underground...
The Book of Praise (1862)
This influential anthology of hymns was the work of Roundell Palmer*, a distinguished politician and man of letters. Its full title was The Book of Praise from the best English Hymn Writers. It was published by Macmillan in London and Cambridge in 1862. The frontispiece showed a picture of David with his harp, to emphasise the continuity of tradition between the great psalmist and contemporary hymn writers. The book was very successful, and there were many further...
DRAPER, Bourne Hall. b. Cumnor, near Oxford, 1775; d. Southampton, 12 October 1843. He was born into a Church of England family that was too poor to send him for training as an ordinand. He worked as a printer's apprentice at the Clarendon Press, Oxford. He became a Baptist, and when his apprenticeship was ended, he went to study (1802-04) at the Baptist Academy, Bristol, under John Ryland* (Junior, 1753-1825). Ordained in 1804, he became pastor of a Baptist Church at Chipping Norton, and then...
Break, day of God, O break. Henry Burton* (1840-1930).
According to Telford, annotating the 1904 Wesleyan Methodist Hymn Book, this was written on Christmas Eve 1900 at Blundellsands, near Liverpool: stanza 1 was written on a railway bridge, the remainder at Burton's home (Telford, 1906, p. 165). It was later printed in Burton's Songs of the Highway (1924). It had four stanzas:
Break, day of God, O break, Sweet light of heavenly skies! I all for thee forsake, And from my dead self rise: O...
BROWN, Brenton. b. Port Elizabeth, South Africa, 1 July 1973. Raised in the southern suburbs of Cape Town, Brown attended South African College Schools, studied law at the University of Cape Town, and then received a Rhodes Scholarship to study PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at the University of Oxford (1996-98), where he also received a one-year Postgraduate Diploma in Theology (1998-99).
Brown's involvement in worship leadership began during his time at the University of Cape Town,...
The early Brethren emphasized the unity of believers: 'one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren' (Matthew: 23:8). While not all Brethren have practised this truth, it remains a basic principle. They began in about 1825 in Dublin, whence they spread to Plymouth, and established the first assembly. When members went out preaching, people called them 'brethren from Plymouth'. Brethren believe in the two views of the church that they find in scripture, namely the universal church -...
WREN, Brian Arthur. b. Romford, Essex, 3 June 1936. He was educated at the Royal Liberty (Grammar) School, Romford. After National Service (1955-57), he read Modern Languages at New College, Oxford (BA 1960) and Theology at Mansfield College, Oxford (BA 1962). He was awarded the Oxford DPhil in 1968 for a thesis on 'The Language of Prophetic Eschatology in the Old Testament'.
Ordained in 1965, he served as minister of Hockley and Hawkwell Congregational Church in his native Essex (1965-70). He...
FOLEY, (William) Brian. b. Waterloo, Liverpool, 28 November 1919; d. Crosby, Liverpool, 11 October 2000. He was educated at St Mary's Irish Christian Brothers' School at Crosby, Lancashire, and at Upholland College, near Wigan, where he trained for the Roman Catholic priesthood. He was ordained in 1945. His parish ministry was in Liverpool for ten years; Bootle for eleven; Birkdale for five; and eventually, from 1971, in Clayton Green, Chorley, Lancashire. He died at Nazarene House,...
HOARE, Brian Richard. b. Upminster, Essex, 9 December 1935. Hoare was educated at Southwell Minster Grammar School, at Westminster College, London, and at Richmond College, University of London. After teaching Religious Education at Calverton, Nottinghamshire, he became Secretary of the Colleges of Education Christian Union (Inter-Varsity Fellowship) in London (1962-68). He was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1971, and was chaplain at Hunmanby Hall School, Filey, Yorkshire. He then served...
Brief life is here our portion. Bernard of Cluny* (12th century), translated by John Mason Neale* (1818-1866).
This is a translation of 'Hic breve vivitur, his breve plangitur, hic breve fletur', from the poem by Bernard of Cluny (or Morlaix), De Contemptu Mundi. That poem began 'Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus'* (later translated by Neale as 'The world is very evil'*), but Neale first worked from an extract by Richard Chenevix Trench (in Sacred Latin Poetry, 1849) beginning...
Bristol Tune Book. Until the First Edition of A&M (1861) and the edition of Church Hymns with Tunes (1874), hymn books were normally printed with words only, sometimes with the names of appropriate tunes added to the texts. Tune books were printed separately. Among the most successful mid-19th-century examples were The London Tune Book, The Leeds Tune Book, The Bradford Tune Book, and The Burnley Tune-Book.
The Bristol Tune Book. A Manual of Tunes and Chants, edited by Alfred Stone, was one...
Broadcast Praise (1981). This collection of 101 hymns, published in 1981, was a supplement to The BBC Hymn Book* of 1951, intended to fulfil a purpose similar to the parent book. The foreword by Colin Semper acknowledged the development of hymnody since 1951, and hoped that the supplement would attract a younger audience.
A few classic hymns omitted from the earlier book were included, and (in one or two cases) a text already provided there was re-printed with a new, and usually more popular,...
Broadcasting Hymns in Britain
In the long history of hymns and hymn singing, broadcasting is a development that dates from the early 20th century. It is of considerable significance. The coming of what was at one time called 'the wireless', and its transition to 'radio', was followed by the advent of television, at first in black and white and subsequently in colour. Throughout the last century, and into the present one, broadcasters have been quick to seize the opportunities provided by media...
By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered. Dietrich Bonhoeffer* (1906-1945), translated by Fred Pratt Green* (1903-2000).
This poem was sent by Bonhoeffer from prison to his mother in a letter dated 28 December 1944, as a New Year Greeting to her and his friends at the opening of the final year of his life, before his tragic execution on 9 April 1945. The German text, beginning 'Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen', was printed in a hymn book for young people, Die singende Schar ('The...
By the cross, sad vigil keeping. ? Jacopone da Todi (ca, 1236-1306), translated by Richard Mant* (1776-1848).
This was Mant's translation of 'Stabat Mater dolorosa'*, printed in the Anglo-Catholic British Magazine (October 1833) and then in Mant's Ancient Hymns from the Roman Breviary (1837), where it wss the 'Hymn for Good Friday, (2)'. It is one of the texts that has been used by compilers to make the customary English version, together with 'At the cross her station keeping'* by Edward...
CAEDMON. b. 7th century; d. ca. 670-680. What little is known of Caedmon's life is found in Bede*'s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (finished 731), where he describes Caedmon as a lay brother and herdsman at Whitby Abbey during the time of St Hilda as abbess (657-680). According to Bede's story, the monks were singing one evening, and Caedmon left the gathering and went to the stable because he knew no songs (the Anglo-Saxon gloss to Bede*'s Historia adds that Caedmon left 'for shame')....
Caelestis formam gloriae. Latin, 15th Century, author unknown.
According to Frere (1909, p. 353) this hymn was 'one of those anciently sung at Salisbury and elsewhere for the Transfiguration.' He then goes on to say that 'when that festival was brought into common use at the end of the XVth century many new hymns were written for it, and this among the number.' JJ gives its provenance as being found in a Sarum Breviary (Venice, 1495). It is of unknown authorship. It began:
Caelestis formam...
EVANS, Caleb. b. Bristol, 12 November 1737; d. 9 August 1791. Evans lived in Bristol for almost all of his life. His father, Hugh Evans, was pastor at Broadmead Baptist Church and President of the Bristol Baptist Academy run by the church. After training at the Mile End Academy in London, Caleb was baptised at Little Wild Street Baptist Church, and called to ministry in 1757, becoming associate minister with Josiah Thompson at Unicorn Yard Baptist church in London. In 1759 he was called to join...
The Cambridge Carol-Book was published in 1924 by SPCK (reprinted 1951). It was the work of George Ratcliffe Woodward* (words) and Charles Wood* (most of the music; occasional items were harmonized by GRW and one by George Herbert Palmer*). Its full title was The Cambridge Carol-Book, being fifty-two songs for Christmas, Easter, and other seasons. In fact it contained 53 songs, of which 34 were for Christmas-tide, including 'Ding! dong! merrily on high'* and 'Past three a clock, and a cold...
Cambridge Hymnal (1967). This hymnal, published in 1967, was the work of David Holbrook* (1923-2011) as literary editor and Elizabeth Poston* as music editor. It originated in discussions between Holbrook (tutor at Bassingbourn Village College, Cambridgeshire, 1954-61, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, 1961-65) and local teachers, concerning the quality of hymns used at morning assemblies in English schools. Holbrook argued that 'little or no attention was paid to the meaning of what was...
Caneuon Ffydd (2001). In 1993 the five major denominations in Wales (Anglican, Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist, Presbyterian) appointed a joint committee to produce a hymnbook for the use of all the Welsh-speaking churches. A hope that such a book might be produced had been expressed in 1927, but never realized. The book, Caneuon Ffydd ('Songs of Faith') appeared in 2001 with 873 Welsh texts and 704 tunes, and, in addition, 86 English texts without tunes, and 33 Psalms and Canticles.
The...
The Canterbury Hymnal was a type of New Hymnal (see Medieval hymns and hymnals*) that was apparently introduced at Canterbury during the late 10th-century Anglo-Saxon monastic reform movement called the Benedictine Reform (see 'Rule of Benedict'*). It was one of two types of monastic hymnal known to have been in use in England after the Benedictine Reform, the other being the Winchester Hymnal*. All information about the Canterbury Hymnal must be deduced from the hymnals themselves, since other...
ROBERTS, Caradog. b. Rhosllanerchrugog, Denbighshire, 30 October 1878; d. Wrexham, Denbighshire, 3 March 1935. He trained as a carpenter but became a full-time musician, studying with J.C. Bridge, organist of Chester Cathedral. He was organist of Mynydd Seion Congregational Church, Wrexham (1894-1903), and of Bethlehem Congregational Church, Rhosllanerchrugog (1904-35). He was director of Music at University College of North Wales, Bangor (1914-20). As a hymn tune composer he is known outside...
BONNER, Carey. b. Southwark, London, 1 May 1859; d. Muswell Hill, London, 16 June 1938. Born in London, the son of a Baptist minister, who gave him his Christian name in admiration of the great Baptist missionary, William Carey (1761-1834). After working in London for a publisher, Bonner trained for the Baptist ministry at Rawdon Baptist College, Leeds, and was ordained in 1884. He was minister at Oakfield Union Church, Sale, Cheshire (1884-95), and at Portland Chapel, Southampton (1895-1900)....
Carmina Gadelica (1900, and after).
The full title of this remarkable collection is Carmina Gadelica, Hymns and Incantations, with Illustrative Notes on Words, Rites,and Customs, Dying and Obsolete: orally collected in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and Translated into English. Volumes I and II were the work of Alexander Carmichael* (Gaelic name Alastair MacGillemhicheil) (1832-1912). Carmichael was an exciseman who collected Gaelic hymns, prayers, charms, and songs from the Highlands...
The Catholic Apostolic Church, founded in 1835, is generally associated with the charismatic Scottish preacher (and friend of Thomas Carlyle*), Edward Irving (1792-1834); members of the denomination were often referred to as 'Irvingites'. Irving did lay some of the theological foundations of the Church, but he died in the very early years of the movement and before its foundation as a church, leaving John Bate Cardale (1802-77) and Henry Drummond (1786-1860), a well-to-do banker and Member of...
ALEXANDER, Cecil Frances. b. Dublin, April 1818, exact date unknown; d. Derry, 12 October 1895. She was the daughter of Major John Humphreys, a distinguished former soldier who had served in the Napoleonic Wars, and his wife Elizabeth. Her father became agent to the Earl of Wicklow in 1825, and the family were closely associated with the Protestant aristocracy of Ireland. Fanny, as she was known to her family, was well educated and religious, much influenced by figures such as John Keble* and...
TAYLOR, Cecily. b. Coulsdon, Surrey, 25 March 1930. She was evacuated during the war, and enjoyed what she calls a 'considerably varied' primary school career, attending six schools by the age of twelve. She worshipped in the local Anglican Church, but returned after the war to her home, where she was introduced to a Congregational youth group by a friend. At the age of 17 she joined the church and remained in membership for 40 years. There also she met her husband, and was involved in church...
MUDIE, Charles Edward. b. Chelsea, London, 18 October 1818; d. Hampstead, London, 28 October 1890. Mudie followed in his father's footsteps as a bookseller. He established his own shop in Bloomsbury in 1840, and for a time was also in business as a publisher. In 1842 he founded the subscription library for which he is chiefly remembered. At its peak this had over 25,000 subscribers, with branches in several parts of London, as well as Birmingham and Manchester. The library exercised a great...
SPURGEON, Charles Haddon. b. Kelvedon, Essex, 19 June 1834; d. Menton, France, 31 January 1892. He was the elder son of a clerk to a coal merchant who was also a Baptist lay preacher and who later became an independent minister. Charles went to school in Colchester and later spent a few months at an agricultural college. He joined the Baptist Church on 3 May 1850 and in spite of his extreme youth almost immediately began his preaching ministry. After short period in teaching, he became a...
HUTCHESON, Charles. b. Glasgow, 1792; d. Glasgow, 20 January 1860. He lived all his life in Glasgow and worked in business there. He was a member of St George's Parish church (now St George's Tron Church). He was an amateur composer, and had a fine singing voice. He published Christian Vespers (1832), containing hymn tunes. He is known for the tune STRACATHRO, composed probably ca. 1849, and published in a collection entitled Mitchison's Improved and Enlarged Edition of Robertson's Selection of...
ALEXANDER, Charles McCallon. b. Meadow, Tennessee, 24 October 1867; d. Birmingham, England, 13 October 1920. He was the son of John D. Alexander, a well-known musical leader, and Martha McCallon. A singing evangelist in the style of Ira D. Sankey*, young Alexander was influenced by his family's singing Gospel hymns around the fireside and by his mother's reading Dwight L. Moody*'s sermons to the family each night. Alexander attended Maryville Preparatory School and College, Maryville, Tennessee...
ROBERTSON, Charles. b. Springburn, Glasgow, 22 October 1940. He was educated at The Orphan Homes of Scotland Primary School (Quarrier's), Bridge of Weir; Camphill Senior Secondary School, Paisley; and New College, University of Edinburgh (MA). After studying divinity at New College, he was licensed to preach on 22 April 1964, and ordained and inducted to Kiltearn Parish Church, near Dingwall, Ross-shire, on 21 October 1965. He married Alison Robertson* in 1965. In June 1978 he was translated...
ROGERS, Charles. b. Dunino, near Anstruther, Fife, 18 April 1825; d. Edinburgh, 18 September 1890. The son of a minister of the Church of Scotland, he was educated at the parish school and the University of St Andrews (1839-1843), followed by training for the ministry. He was licensed to preach in 1846, and served as an assistant minister and as a 'missionary' to churches affected by the Great Schism of 1843 (Dunfermline North, 1849-50, Carnoustie, 1851-52). He moved to Bridge of Allan, near...
WESLEY, Charles. b. Epworth, Lincolnshire, 18 December 1707; d. London, 29 March 1788. He was youngest son and 16th/17th child (though calculations vary) of Samuel Wesley (I)* and the redoubtable Susanna, and younger brother to John*. From Westminster School (1716-26), first as King's Scholar and finally Captain of the school, he gained a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford (BA 1730, MA 1733). He became leader (in John's absence as their father's curate) of a small group known as the 'Holy...
FRY, Charles William. b. Alderbury, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, 30 May 1838; d. Polmont, near Falkirk, Scotland, 24 August 1882. He was the son of a bricklayer. He was registered at birth as 'William Charles', but married as 'Charles William'. At the age of 17 he was converted at a Sunday evening prayer meeting at the Wesleyan chapel in Alderbury. He became a Wesleyan local preacher, but he was also a considerable musician, playing various instruments, including the cornet, which he played in a...
TUCKER, Charlotte Maria [pseudonym A. L. O. E. (A Lady of England)]. b. Friern Hatch, Barnet, 8 May 1821; d Amritsar, India, 2 December 1893. She was the daughter of Henry St George (1771/2-1851), who rose to the position of chairman in the East India Company, and his wife, Jane Boswell (d. 1869), who was related to Samuel Johnson's biographer. She had a privileged and largely secular upbringing, but underwent an Evangelical conversion around 1848, which led her to devote her life to God's...
Chartism was a predominantly working-class movement which campaigned for political reform in Britain from 1838 until the mid-1850s. In particular, the 'People's Charter' contained six demands intended to make the British political system more democratic; these demands were:
A vote for every man over the age of 21;
A secret ballot;
No property qualification for members of Parliament;
Payment for MPs (so poor men could serve);
Constituencies of equal size;
Annual elections for...
Chetham's Psalmody
The title of this important collection was The Book of Psalmody. It was first published at Sheffield in 1718 by John Chetham or Cheetham (1665 – baptized 4 February -1746), subsequently master of the Clerk's School, Skipton, Yorkshire, and curate of Skipton, 1741-46. Further editions followed in 1722, 1724 and 1731, with many successors. It has been described as 'the most important country collection [of psalm settings] of all' (Temperley, 1979, p. 181). Each edition during...
Children of Jerusalem. John Henley* (1800-1842).
This Palm Sunday hymn for children has appeared in many forms. The text that is found in the Memorials compiled by his widow is presumably the one that Henley approved before his untimely death. It was printed as follows:
“HOSANNA! BLESSED IS HE THAT COMETH IN THE NAME OF THE LORD! HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST!”
1.Children of JerusalemSang the praise of Jesu's name;Children, too, of modern daysJoin to sing the Saviour's praise.
CHORUS: - Hark! while...
This was the title of an attractive book published in 1937 by Oxford University Press, edited by W. H. Hamilton* (words) and H.E. Wiseman (music). It was reprinted five times before 1958. The preface indicates its aims clearly: 'A book of good hymns for very little children has long been a felt want'. The book begins with simple and short hymns of praise, with graces, and with brief prayer hymns. Then comes 'The Life of Christ', 'Children and their Friends' (including two 'Maxims for decent wee...
Children's Hymn Book (1881). The Children's Hymn Book was 'published under the direction of W. Walsham How, Ashton Oxenden, and John Ellerton' by the SPCK. It was not the first book with that title: The Children's Hymn Book had been published by Thomas Nelson in 1854, and was successful enough to be enlarged in subsequent editions. The 1881 book, however, was the most important and successful of 19th-century hymnbooks for children of the Church of England (in JJ, p. 223, WTB thought that the...
British Children's Hymnody
It became apparent from the very earliest days of hymnody that children needed their own hymns. This overview will show how educational, musical and cultural changes are reflected in the many collections of hymns written specifically for children. The challenge presented to writers of children's hymns has always been how to engage the young mind with thought-provoking material but present it in an attractive and accessible manner. Some of the earliest hymn texts...
BOWATER, Christopher Alan (Chris). b. 1947. Bowater is a British songwriter and pastor. Between 1978 and 2006 he had published some 51 songs through Sovereign Lifestyle Music, Kingsway and Thankyou Music. Many of these have featured in various editions of series such as Mission Praise* and Songs of Fellowship*, as well as in denominational hymnals. Among his most popular and enduring songs are 'Faithful God' (1985) and 'Jesus shall take the highest honour' (1998). He has also published new...
Christ has risen while earth slumbers. John Bell (b. 1949) and Graham Maule* (1958-2019).
'Christ has risen' first appeared in the collection Enemy of Apathy: Songs of the Passion and the Resurrection, and the Coming of the Holy Spirit (1988), the second of three early volumes of songs developed with over a dozen dialogue partners in the Wild Goose Worship Group (WGWG). The collaborative creative process with the WGWG was evident in the production of the early volumes: they sought to prepare a...
Christ is coming! Let creation. John Ross Macduff* (1818-1895).
Based on Revelation 22: 20, this Advent hymn is from Macduff's Altar Stones (1853), published when he was minister of St Madoes, Perthshire (Barkley, 1979, p. 141). It became Macduff's best known hymn. It had four stanzas:
Christ is coming! Let creation From her groans and travail cease; Let the glorious proclamation Hope restore and faith increase: Christ is coming! Come, Thou blessèd Prince of Peace.
Earth can now but...
Christ is our light! The bright and morning star. Leith Fisher* (1941-2009).
This hymn was written for the first Sunday after the Epiphany, which also marks the Baptism of Christ. It was written while Fisher was minister of the Old Parish Church of Falkirk (1979-90). On being invited back to Falkirk from his new parish of Wellington in Glasgow (1990-2006) to conduct a wedding, the author added a third stanza, based on the wedding at Cana (John 2: 1-11). The first stanza refers to 'the bright...
Christ is the heavenly food that gives. Timothy Rees* (1874-1939).
This hymn for Holy Communion was first published in The Mirfield Mission Hymn-Book (Mirfield, 1922) with the first line 'Christ is the Sacrifice we plead', in three 8-line stanzas with a refrain, and subsequently in John Lambert Rees's Sermons and Hymns by Timothy Rees, Bishop of Llandaff (1946). Stanza 1 was as follows in 1922:
Christ is the Sacrifice we plead Before th'eternal Throne;His Cross alone can cancel guilt And for...
Christ is the world's Redeemer. St Columba* (521-597), translated by Duncan MacGregor* (1854-1923).
This is a translation of the second part of a Latin hymn, found in two manuscripts held in Dublin, in the library of Trinity College, and in the Franciscan College.This second part begins 'Christe Redemptor gentium'. Both sections were traditionally attributed to St Columba, but a note in the Trinity College MS casts doubt on his authorship of the first part, beginning 'In Te, Christe,...
Christ of all my hopes the ground. Ralph Wardlaw* (1779-1853).
First published in the supplement of 1817 to A Selection of Hymns for Public Worship: Intended primarily for the Church in Albion Street Chapel (Glasgow, 1803). It was in two parts: the first was entitled 'Christ All, and in all'. Seven stanzas, from parts 1 and 2 were printed in the Church Hymnary (1898), but thereafter it disappeared from Scottish books. SofP has a text of three 8-line stanzas, and SofPE shortens this to two. It...
'Christ the Lord is risen today'. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
First published in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739), entitled 'Hymn for Easter-Day', in eleven 4-line stanzas. It was not included in John Wesley*'s A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists (1780), the scheme of which precluded seasonal hymns, but six stanzas found their way into the 1831 Supplement to the Collection among the additional hymns. Its use has become and remained widespread since then, though in...
Christ, who knows all his sheep. Richard Baxter* (1615-1691).
This is from Baxter's poem, 'The Exit', dated 'Decemb. 19.1682' and printed in Additions to the Poetical Fragments of Richard Baxter (1683). It begins 'My Soul go boldly forth,/ Forsake this Sinful Earth', and the theme throughout is the contrast between the joys of heaven and the pain and sorrow of earth. Verse 11, for example reads:
O Blessed Company,
Where all in Harmony,
Jehovah's Praises Sing,
Still without ceasing:
And all...
BATEMAN, Christian Henry. b. Wyke, Yorkshire, England, 9 August 1813; d. Carlisle, Cumberland, 27 July 1889. Bateman was the son of John Frederick Bateman (1772–1851), a mostly unsuccessful inventor, and Mary Agnes Bateman (née La Trobe) (1772–1848), and the fourth of six siblings (his older brother, the eminent civil engineer John Frederick La Trobe Bateman (1810–1889), was - unlike his father - one of the most successful innovators of his era, supervising reservoirs and waterworks in Ireland...
Christian Hymns (1977, 2004). Published in 1977 by the Evangelical Movement of Wales, this collection of 901 texts provided a rich selection of hymns by Isaac Watts* (71 hymns) and almost certainly the fullest representation of Charles Wesley* (93 hymns) outside Methodism. It also retained much classic Victorian hymnody, while introducing contemporary writers such as Alan Clifford, Eluned Harrison* and Vernon Higham* to a wider audience. A revision of the book appeared in 1985 and a full new...
LATROBE, Christian Ignatius. b. Fulneck, near Leeds, 12 Feb 1758; d. Fairfield, near Manchester, 6 May 1836. Christian was the son of Benjamin Latrobe, one of the leaders of the Moravian Church in England. He was educated at the Moravian Church's schools in Niesky and Barby, Germany (1771-84), where he studied theology and also taught for five years. He was ordained a minister in the Moravian Church and became secretary of the Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel, the missionary branch...
Christian Praise (1957). In a decade not often admired for innovation, 1957 saw the arrival of Christian Praise, a collection of 401 hymns designed not as a church hymn-book but for student fellowships, schools, Bible classes and other groups outside denominational structures. The quality of the hymns marked a clear advance on what was normally available hitherto; published by the Tyndale Press, it came from a small committee chaired by Derek Kidner*, who was experienced in both parish ministry...
Christian Psalmody (1833 and after). This collection, edited by Edward Bickersteth*, became one of the most influential hymnbooks in the Church of England before A&M, and marked a significant increase in the resources available to those who wished to encourage hymn singing. Its title page in 1833 gives an accurate description of its contents and scope:
Christian Psalmody: A Collection of above 700 Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs; selected and arranged for public, school, family and...
The Christian Social Union, and its hymns
The Christian Social Union was founded in 1889. However, its concerns had been exercising thoughtful church people, and many others, throughout the 19th century: movements such as those of the Chartists in the 1840s, and the writings of such thinkers as Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872) and Charles Kingsley* provided a background to the practical experience of clergy such as Percy Dearmer* in the East End of London. The Salvation Army was founded...
NORTON, Christopher Garth. b. Dunedin, New Zealand, 22 June 1953. Educated at Otago Boys' High School, Norton showed early promise as a musician; he began composing at the age of 14, and by the age of 16 he had had an orchestral work performed and broadcast. In 1974, already a talented pianist studying under Maurice Till, he gained a first-class degree in music from the University of Otago, and went on to teach music in a number of Wellington high schools, where he worked as a...
TYE, Christopher. b. ca.1505; d. before 15 March 1573. Tye took the BMus degree at Cambridge in 1536 and became a lay clerk at King's College, Cambridge in 1537. Later he was Magister choristarum of Ely Cathedral and was awarded a DMus degree at Cambridge in 1545. Although evidence is scant, we know that Tye was introduced to the court of Henry VIII, most likely through his friendship with Dr Richard Cox, Archdeacon of Ely, and tutor to the young Prince Edward. Tye dedicated his metrical...
WALKER, Christopher Dixon Harvey. b. London, 9 June 1947. Walker became a chorister at Bristol Cathedral and later studied composition at Bristol University and Trent Park College. On leaving university he became director of music at the (then newly opened) Roman Catholic Cathedral at Clifton in Bristol. He met members of (and subsequently joined) the St Thomas More Group* before emigrating to the USA in 1990, where he became a lecturer at Mount Saint Mary College and director of music at St...
Christ's is the world in which we move. John Lamberton Bell* (1949- ) and Graham Maule* (1958-2019).
From Love from Below (Wild Goose Songs 3) (1989) and reprinted in When Grief Is Raw (1997), this is a fervent plea for Christians to feel compassion for others. The hymn, with its title 'A Touching Place', has four stanzas with a refrain, and 'Feel for' are the opening words of stanzas 2-4. It names those for whom we should care, including the people whom we most avoid (stanza 2 line 2), those...
The Church Army Mission Hymn Book. This was published in Britain ca. 1960 (no date is given, and there is no indication in the very brief preface). It was a successor to Hymns for the Church Army (ca. 1894), edited by Wilson Carlile*, the army's founder, and Hymns and Choruses of the Church Army (n.d., but ca. 1910, and frequently reprinted).
The front cover was embossed with the Church Army shield, a crown and crossed swords, and the words 'Fight the good fight'. The book contained 133 hymns,...
Church Hymnal (Cooke and Denton, 1853). This was one of the principal books published in the years before the First Edition of A&M. The full title was The Church Hymnal. A Book of Hymns adapted to the use of The Church of England and Ireland, arranged as they are to be sung in Churches. No editors' names appeared on the title page. No date is given on the title page. The copy in the British Library, presented by John Julian in 1893, bears his inscription 'Known as Cooke & Denton's...
Church Hymns (1871), Church Hymns with Tunes (1874). The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) had printed hymns since 1837, when it added them to a reprint of Tate* and Brady*'s Metrical Psalms, the New Version*. In subsequent editions, more hymns were added, and then printed separately from the Psalms in 1852. Psalms and Hymns for Public Worship followed in 1855, with an Appendix in 1863, edited by Berdmore Compton, then rector of Barford, Warwickshire. Some churches, such as St...
Church of England Hymn Book, A (1880). This hymnbook, edited by Godfrey Thring*, was an important contender for an official hymn book for the Church of England, although Thring claimed disingenuously in the preface that the time was not right for such a book. He went on:
On the other hand, the very arguments which may be urged against an authorized hymnal are in themselves a call for further progress, in order that hymns which offend both the taste and conscience, and which in a literary point...
Churches of Christ in Great Britain and Ireland came into existence from the mid-1830s as congregations were formed, usually breaking away from Scotch Baptist churches. They were influenced by the ideas of Alexander Campbell (1788-1866), son of an Anti-Burgher Seceder Presbyterian minister in Ireland, Thomas, who emigrated to the USA in 1807. The Campbells became two of the four main leaders of the movement in the USA, from which three distinct 20th-century groups derive: Churches of Christ,...
Clare Taylor. b. probably early 18th century, date unknown; d. February 1778. Her hymns were published by Daniel Sedgwick* in a small volume containing the hymns of John Ryland*, Clare Taylor, and Samuel Crossman*. The title of the Taylor section was Hymns composed chiefly on The Atonement of Christ, and Redemption Through His Blood (1765). This was followed by two quotations: 'The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. 1 John 1. 7', and another from the first stanza of Hymn...
Clarendon Hymn Book (1936). This was the title given to a collection published in 1936 by Oxford University Press. It was compiled by an anonymous 'committee of Public School masters' (i.e., masters teaching in fee-paying Independent Schools: see 'Public School hymnody'*). The word 'Clarendon' in the title (presumably to associate the book with the distinguished imprint of the OUP) conceals its predominantly Charterhouse origins.
Although it was not a publication of the Headmasters' Conference,...
GALE, Clement Rowland. b. Kew, Surrey, England, January 1860, d. New York City, 10 May 1934. Gale was a founding member of the American Guild of Organists* (1896), a member of the music faculty of General Theological Seminary in New York, and composer of several hymn tunes.
Several published accounts give Gale's date of birth as 12 March 1862, but official records show that he was born in January 1860 to William Frederick Gale (b. 1823?) and Elizabeth Gale (b. 1824?) and was baptized at St...
COLUMBA, St. ('Colm Cille'). b. County Donegal, Ireland, 521; d. Iona, Scotland, 597. Born in the north-west of Ireland, he was trained and educated in Ireland, emigrating to Iona in 563 where he founded a monastery and remained for the rest of his life. The name 'Colm Cille' means 'Dove of the Church', which is latinised as 'Columba'.
St Adomnán (d. 704), ninth abbot of Iona and Columba's biographer, stated that Columba had written a book of hymns for the week (Hymnorum liber septimaniorum)...
Come and let us drink of that new river. John Damascene* (ca. 655- ca. 745), translated by John Mason Neale* (1818-1866).
This hymn by St John of Damascus, or St John Damascene, 'Δευτε πόμα πίωμεν', was Ode III of the 'Canon for Easter Day, called the Golden Canon, or, The Queen of Canons', from the Pentekostarion Kharmosynon ('Joyful Pentecostarion'), used from Easter Day to the first Sunday after Pentecost (see Litvack, 1994, p. 131, and the entry under 'The Day of Resurrection'). It had nine...
Come Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,/ To whom we for our children cry. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
This was headed 'At the Opening of a School at Kingswood', referring to the school founded by John Wesley*. It was opened in 1739 for the children of the local colliers near Bath, and reopened as an enlarged school for the children of Wesley's preachers and others in 1748 (Hildebrandt and Beckerlegge, 1983, p. 643). It is not known which of these events is signified in the title: probably the 1748...
Come, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost/ Honour the means... Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
This is No. 182 from Volume II of Charles Wesley's Hymns and Sacred Poems (1749), the book published under his own name with John Wesley*'s approval. This hymn was headed 'At the Baptism of Adults'. It had six stanzas:
Come, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Honour the Means Injoin'd by Thee, Make good our Apostolic Boast And own thy Glorious Ministry.
We now thy Promis'd Presence claim, Sent to disciple All...
Come let us to the Lord our God. John Morison* (1750-1798), perhaps with John Logan* (1747/8-1788).
This paraphrase of Hosea 6: 1-4 was printed in the Scottish Translations and Paraphrases (1781). It has continued in use in the Church of Scotland from that time on, and is found in successive psalters and hymnbooks, up to and including CH3 and CH4. It was used in a number of 19th-century books, but in the 20th century its spread was remarkable, and it is found in many places outwith...
Come see the place where Jesus lay. James Montgomery* (1771-1854).
In JJ, p. 251, there is precise information about this hymn. It was written for 'The Seventh Anniversary of the Sheffield and Attercliffe Missionary Union in aid of the London Missionary Society', and was first sung in Howard Street Independent Chapel, Sheffield on Easter Sunday, April 2nd, 1820. In leaflet form, it was signed 'J.M.'
It was included in Montgomery's The Christian Psalmist (Glasgow, 1825) and, with minor...
Come to our dark nature's night. George Rawson* (1807-1889).
This hymn was printed in Psalms, Hymns, and passages of Scripture for Christian Worship (1853), the 'Leeds Hymn Book', a book in which Rawson assisted the local Congregationalist editors. There were originally nine stanzas, as found in the Primitive Methodist Hymnal (1887, 1889):
Come to our dark nature's nightWith thy blessèd inward light,Holy Ghost, the Infinite, Comforter Divine.
We are sinful; cleanse us, Lord:Sick and...
Come, all harmonious Tongues. Isaac Watts* (1674-1748).
From Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707), Book II, 'Composed on Divine Subjects, Conformable to the Word of God'. It was Hymn 84, entitled 'The Same' (as the previous hymn, 'The Passion and Exaltation of Christ'). The text in 1707 was in eight Short Metre stanzas:
Come, all harmonious Tongues, Your noblest Music bring;'Tis Christ the Everlasting God, And Christ the Man we sing.
Tell how he took our Flesh To take away our Guilt, Sing...
Come all whoe'er have set. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788)
From Hymns and Sacred Poems (1749), the two volumes issued by Charles Wesley in his own name, though with his brother's approval. This was headed 'Another'; it was one of three poems entitled 'On a Journey'. The first prays for guidance, but the other two are confident expressions of a progress towards the promised land, 'the New Jerusalem above,/ The seat of everlasting love' (stanza 2 lines 5-6).
The hymn had five 6-line stanzas, marking...
Come, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,/ One God in persons three. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
Charles Wesley wrote at least three hymns with this first line. One continued
Come Father, Son, and Holy Ghost/ Honour the means...*.
Another began
Come Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,/ To whom we for our children cry...*.
Another was the hymn above. It was printed in the 'Numbers' section of Volume I of Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures (Bristol, 1762). It began with No. 200, headed...
Come, Holy Ghost, all quickening fire/ Come, and in me. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788).
One of Charles Wesley's most beautiful hymns, this was first printed in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739), where it was entitled 'Hymn to the Holy Ghost'. It had six stanzas, all of which were used, with minor alterations, by John Wesley* in A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists (1780), where it was in the section entitled 'For Believers Groaning for full Redemption'. Later Wesleyan...
Come, Holy Ghost, all quickening fire/Come, and my hallowed heart inspire. Charles Wesley* (1707-88).
This companion hymn to 'Come, Holy Ghost, all-quickening fire/Come and in me'* [delight to rest'] was published one year later than that hymn. It was in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1740), where it was entitled 'Hymn to God the Sanctifier'. It was a longer hymn of eight stanzas, with (like the earlier hymn) the first stanza repeated as the last, with one principal alteration, in which line 2 of the...
Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire. John Cosin* (1595-1672).
This is probably the best known of the many English translations of the medieval Latin hymn 'Veni creator spiritus'*. It was first printed in Cosin's A Collection of Private Devotions in the Practice of the Ancient Church (1627), where it was assigned to the Third Hour, at which the Holy Ghost was traditionally thought to have descended at Pentecost. It may have been written for the coronation of King Charles I in 1625, at which...
Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove. Isaac Watts* (1674-1748).
First published in Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707), from Book II, 'Composed on Divine Subjects, Conformable to the Word of God'. It was entitled 'Breathing after the Holy Spirit; or, Fervency of Devotion desir'd'. It had five 4-line stanzas:
Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove, With all thy quickning Powers, Kindle a Flame of sacred Love In these cold Hearts of ours.
Look, how we grovel here below, And hug these trifling Toys; Our...
Come, let us join with faithful souls. William George Tarrant* (1853-1928).
Written in 1915, and published in the Congregational Hymnary (1916). It was one of four hymns by Tarrant in the revised Fellowship Hymn Book (1933). It remained in use in Unitarian churches (Hymns of Worship, 1927, Hymns of Worship Revised , 1962) and it remains in HFF (1991), though not in HFL (which prints only two hymns by Tarrant). It had six stanzas:
Come, let us join with faithful souls Our song of faith to...
Come, let us sing the song of songs. James Montgomery* (1771-1854).
This was written for the Sheffield Sunday School Whitsun Festival, May 1841. It was later published in Montgomery's Original Hymns (1853), where it was Hymn LXXXIX, entitled 'The Song of Songs'. The title comes from The Song of Solomon, which opens with the words 'The song of songs, which is Solomon's.' Montgomery daringly takes the phrase and uses it to mean 'the song that is the song of all songs' (cf. 'the Holy of Holies')....
Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life. George Herbert* (1593-1633).
From Herbert's collection The Temple (Cambridge, 1633), published just after his death, this poem was first used as a hymn in the Oxford Hymn Book (1908), and then in SofP. Herbert's original title for the piece was 'The Call' and, in a neat inversion of the traditional idea that God calls us, Herbert makes this call a personal plea for God, through Jesus, to heal and enrich his life.
The poem takes as its starting point Jesus'...
Come, pure hearts, in sweetest measures. Latin, translated by Robert Campbell* (1814-1868).
First published in Campbell's Hymns and Anthems for Use in the Holy Services of the Church within the United Diocese of St Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblane (Edinburgh, 1850), where it was entitled 'Commemoration of Evangelists'. It was a translation of three stanzas from two anonymous Sequences of the 12th century, 'Iucundare, plebs fidelis'*, and 'Plausu chorus laetabundo'* (altered by Clichtoveus*: see...
Come, said Jesus' sacred voice. Anna Letitia Barbauld* (1742-1825).
From Barbauld's Poems (1792). It was headed 'Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' (from part of Matthew 11: 28). It had five stanzas:
Come, said Jesus' sacred voice, Come and make my paths your choice: I will guide you to your home; Weary pilgrim, hither come!
Thou who houseless, sole, forlorn, Long hast borne the proud world's scorn, Long hast roamed the barren waste, Weary pilgrim,...
Come, sound his praise abroad. Isaac Watts* (1674-1748).
This is Watts's Short Metre paraphrase of Psalm 95 in The Psalms of David imitated in the language of the New Testament, and apply'd to the Christian State and Worship (1719). It was entitled 'Psalm XCV. Short Metre. A Psalm before Sermon.' Watts also wrote a CM and an LM version. The customary text in hymnals is one of three or four stanzas, corresponding to verses 1-7 of the Psalm. In 1719 the stanzas were as follows:
Come sound his...
Come, thou fount of every blessing. Robert Robinson* (1735-1790).
The first known publication of this hymn was in A Collection of Hymns for the use of the Church of Christ: meeting in Angel-Alley, Whitechappel, Margaret-Street, near Oxford-Market, and other churches in fellowship with them (1759). It was made widely known when it was included in Martin Madan*'s A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1760) and in John Rippon*'s Selection of Hymns (1787), and it appeared in other 18th-century...
Come, though we can truly sing. John Murray* (ca. 1740-1815).
This is one of five hymns by Murray, all first published in the 1782 edition of Christian Hymns, Poems and Sacred Songs, Sacred to the Praise of God, Our Saviour, compiled by the English Universalist James Relly* and his brother John Relly. The book was first published in London in 1754, and the 1782 edition was published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for Noah Parker (1734-1787), a convert of Murray's and preacher in Portsmouth...
Come, weary souls with sin distressed. Anne Steele* (1717-1778).
From Poems on Subjects chiefly devotional (1760). It was entitled 'Weary Souls invited to Rest. Mat. xi. 28.' It is a versification of the beautifully expressed and very comforting saying, 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' It had five stanzas:
Come weary souls with sin distrest, The Saviour offers heavenly rest; The kind, the gracious call obey, And cast your gloomy sins...
Come, ye that love the Savior's name. Anne Steele* (1716-1778).
This was Hymn CXXVI in John Ash* and Caleb Evans*s Collection of Hymns Adapted to Public Worship (Bristol, 1769). It was entitled 'The King of Saints' and attributed to 'T.', for Theodosia, the name chosen by Steele for her hymns. It had eight stanzas:
Come, ye that love the Savior's Name, And joy to make it known; The Sovereign of your Hearts proclaim, And bow before His Throne.
Behold your King, your Savior crown'd With...
Congregational Church hymnody in Britain
The term 'Congregational hymnody' is significant for all churches and liturgical traditions where the congregation takes an active and full part in the singing of hymns (contrasted with those places or occasions where the hymns are the province of a specialised choir or the practice of a religious community). This article, however, is limited to an account of hymnody in churches of the Congregational order in England and Wales, during a period beginning...
Creator Spirit, by whose aid. Latin, translated by John Dryden* (1631-1700).
Dryden's translation of the Latin hymn 'Veni creator spiritus'* appeared first in one of a series of poetical collections published by a bookseller in London, Jacob Tonson, entitled Examen Poeticum: Being the Third Part of Miscellany Poems (1693). It consisted of 39 lines, arranged in irregular verses from four to nine lines in length. It was used, with some alteration, by John Wesley* in his first British hymnbook, A...
Crown of Jesus (1862) was a major publication during the years of the expansion of the Roman Catholic church in Britain following Catholic Emancipation, the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill in 1829, and the growth in numbers following immigration from Ireland and the converts from the Oxford Movement*. Library catalogues give the names of the editors as R.R. Suffield and C.F.R. Palmer. Its full title was Crown of Jesus: a complete Catholic manual of devotion, doctrine, and instruction....
The Cymanfa Ganu is a distinctive contribution of Wales to hymn singing. As experienced in the 21st century in Wales and in Welsh communities around the world it is a festival of hymns, largely familiar to those within the culture, sung with great fervour under the direction of a conductor, who also leads the occasion with remarks on the hymns and on the manner in which they are to be sung. It is felt to be a success if a strong emotional response to the hymns is generated. Those present look...
HAMBLY, Cyril Grey. b. Cardiff, 6 January 1931; d. Shrewsbury, 4 December 1999. He was educated at the University of Wales (where he studied music), and trained for the Methodist ministry at Hartley Victoria College, Manchester. He was ordained in 1954, and held appointments in a number of circuits, principally in Wales and East Anglia. He was a contributor to Partners in Praise (1979) and published A Hymn for the Lectionary (1981), a collection of 70 hymns written by him to accompany the...
Daily, daily sing to Mary. Henry Bittleston* (1818-1886), from the 'Hymn of Saint Casimir' probably by Bernard of Cluny* (12th century).
The Latin hymn from which this translation is taken is part 7 of a cycle of hymns, the Mariale, beginning 'Ut jucundas cervus undas, aestuans desiderat'. In the course of a careful discussion of possible authorship, James Mearns* comes down on the side of Bernard of Cluny as the most likely author (JJ, pp. 1200-1202). Section vii of the Mariale begins 'Omni...
LUNDY, Michael (monastic name: Damian) FSC. b. Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, 21 March 1944; d. Oxford, 9 December 1996. The son of a master baker, he was educated at West Vale Catholic Primary School, then at the De Salle (Christian Brothers) Grammar School, Sheffield. He joined the De Salle Religious Order in 1960, and trained at St Cassian's Juniorate, Kintbury, Berkshire; then at Inglewood Novitiate, and at various establishments in Germany and France. He then read English at Magdalene...
Dark, dark indeed, the grave would be. William Gaskell* (1805-1884).
This comforting hymn was published in James Martineau*'s Hymns for the Christian Church and Home (1840, many editions). It was entitled 'The light of the Gospel on the tomb.' It had four stanzas:
Dark, dark indeed the grave would be, Had we no light, O God, from thee; If all we saw were all we knew, Or hope from reason only grew.
But fearless now we rest in faith, A holy life makes happy death,'Tis but a change ordained by...
TERRY, Darley. b. Brighouse, Yorkshire, 19 January 1847; d. Prestatyn, North Wales, 21 January 1933. Terry was a printer at Dewsbury, Yorkshire and a Sunday-school superintendent. He represented Yorkshire on the council of the National Sunday School Union. He was an active member of the Methodist New Connexion, serving on its Sunday schools committee from 1877 to 1899, and on its Young People's and Temperance Department. He is said to have published Poems and Hymns (1904, 1914, second series,...
EVANS, David Emlyn. b. Pen'ralltwen, Newcastle Emlyn, Carmarthen, 21 September 1843; d. Cemmaes, Machynlleth, Montgomeryshire, 19 April 1913. He began life as a draper's assistant, but became a distinguished Welsh musician, much in demand as an Eisteddfod adjudicator. With David Jenkins* he edited Y Cerddor ('The Musician') from 1889 to 1913. He was the music editor of several Welsh hymnbooks, including the Congregationalist Y Caniedydd Cynulleidfaol (1895) and the Wesleyan Methodist Llyfr...
David J. Evans ('Dave'), b. Dartford, Kent, 1957. As a child he lived in Winchester; he was educated at the University of Southampton (BSc). He is a music teacher who has been involved in leading contemporary worship in a number of 'new' churches. He has written many worship songs; by far the best known is 'Be still, for the Presence of the Lord'*.
JRW
Further Reading
Christopher Idle, Exploring Praise! Volume 2: the authors and composers (Darlington: Praise Trust, 2007).
JENKINS, David. b. Trecastle, Breconshire, 30 December 1848; d. Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire, 10 December 1915. He began life as an apprentice to a tailor. His talent for music enabled him to study under Joseph Parry* at Aberystwyth, 1874-78, and he became (from 1882) successively instructor, lecturer, and finally Professor of Music at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. He was precentor of the English Presbyterian Church in Aberystwyth, and noted as a choral conductor. With David Emlyn...
RITCHIE, David Lakie. b. Kingsmuir, Angus, Scotland, 15 September 1864; d. Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 14 December 1951. He was educated at Forfar Academy and at the University of Edinburgh. He was ordained to ministry in the Congregational Church in Scotland, with a pastorate at Dunfermline (1890-96) and then in England at St James's Congregational Church, Newcastle upon Tyne (1896-1903). He was Principal of Nottingham Theological Institute from 1903 to 1919; and, after a year in Montreal as...
GILBERT, Davies. b. St Erth, Cornwall, 6 March 1767; d. Eastbourne, Sussex, 24 December 1839. He was educated at Penzance Grammar School, at a boarding school at Bristol, and at Pembroke College, Oxford (MA, 1789).
Gilbert came from an old Cornish family: his name was originally Giddy and was changed to his wife's name in 1817, after he had acquired a large Sussex estate by marriage. He was prominent in the affairs of Cornwall, and nationally, serving as Member of Parliament for Helston (1804)...
Day by day, dear Lord. Richard of Chichester* (ca. 1197-1253).
This prayer was printed on a card of 1915 in the British Library collection, with the words 'Partly — at least — by St Richard, Bishop of Chichester…'. It was used by Percy Dearmer* in SofPE, in Part VIII, 'Verses and Other Doxologies', as the first of 'Graces and Other Verses':
Day by day, Dear Lord, of thee three things I pray: To see thee more clearly, Love thee more dearly, Follow thee more...
Dear Angel! ever at my side. Frederick William Faber* (1814-1863).
There are two entries in JJ for this hymn, both under the heading 'Dear Angel! ever at my side', which was Faber's own first line. The first gives the printing in Faber's Jesus and Mary; or, Catholic Hymns (1849). The entry in the 'New Supplement', p. 1627, also gives the date of publication as 1849, in Faber's St Wilfrid's Hymns (Faber, converted in 1846, had founded the 'Brothers of the Will of God of the Congregation of St...
Dear Refuge of my weary soul. Anne Steele* (1716-1778).
From Steele's Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional (1760). It was entitled 'God the only Refuge of the Troubled Mind.' It had eight stanzas:
Dear Refuge of my weary soul, On thee, when sorrows rise: On thee, when waves of trouble roll, My fainting hope relies.
While hope revives, though prest with fears, And I can say, my God, Beneath thy feet I spread my cares, And pour my woes abroad.
To thee, I tell each rising grief, For thou...
MONAHAN, (Carl) Dermott. b. Ikkada, South India, 1 January 1906; d. Lambeth, London, 23 May 1957. He was the son of a Wesleyan Methodist missionary, educated at Kingswood School, Bath, the school founded by John Wesley* for the sons of ministers. From there he went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge (BA 1927); after a year (1927-28) as a Colonial Administrator in the Gold Coast (now Ghana), he studied at Handsworth College, Birmingham. He served in educational work in India in the Hyderabad District...
DOLBEN, Digby Augustus Stewart Mackworth. b. Guernsey, Channel Islands, 8 February 1848; d. Luffenham, Rutland, 28 June 1867. He was the son of aristocratic and fiercely Protestant parents, and Digby reacted by becoming involved with Roman Catholicism while still at school at Eton, when he associated with an unofficial order of Benedictines which allowed him to dress as a monk. At Eton he became friendly with Robert Bridges*, who encouraged him to write poetry and admired the result; on a visit...
POTTER, Ethel Olive Doreen (née Cousins). b. Panama, 1925; d. Geneva, 24 June 1980. She was a Jamaican citizen, born in Panama, but growing up in Jamaica, where she studied piano and violin at school. She moved to England and trained as a teacher of music at St Katherine's College, Liverpool. In 1957, she gained her Licentiate of Music degree at Trinity College, London, and was violinist for a number of orchestras.
She married Philip Potter, the General Secretary of the World Council of...
GURNEY, Dorothy Frances (née Blomfield). b. London, 4 October 1858; d. London, 15 June 1932. She was the daughter of the vicar of St Andrew Undershaft in the City of London, and granddaughter of a Bishop of London. In 1887 she married Gerald Gurney, the son of Archer Thompson Gurney*. She and her husband became Roman Catholics in 1919. She published The Childhood of Queen Victoria (1901), Poems (1913), and A Little Book of Quiet (1915). After her death two collections of her poems were...
GALBRAITH, David Douglas. b. Kirkintilloch, East Dunbartonshire, 22 June 1940. Douglas Galbraith was educated at the High School of Dundee: he was organist in his local church while still at school. He went on to the University of St Andrews (MA 1961, BD 1964). As a student he had the opportunity of being seasonal musician at Iona Abbey, which was a formative experience in terms both of liturgy and music. He became a member of the Iona Community* in 1964. Following ordination as a minister in...
Draw us in the spirit's tether. Percy Dearmer* (1867-1936).
First published in SofPE (1931). It was Part II of a hymn of five stanzas, the first two of which were from the hymn by George Hugh Bourne* (1840-1925) beginning 'Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendour'*. Five stanzas of this hymn, which - it is believed - was longer, were printed in the Supplement (1889) to the Second Edition of A&M, and in many later books such as EH.
Dearmer printed three stanzas of Bourne's hymn in SofP (1925)....
Drawn to the Cross which Thou hast blest. Geneviève Mary Irons* (1855-1928).
Written in 1880, this hymn was published in the Sunday Magazine in October of that year, entitled 'Consecration of Self to Christ', and in Irons's manual for Holy Communion, Corpus Christi (1884). It was included without an author's name in the Congregational Church Hymnal (1887), and in the Primitive Methodist Hymnal (1887, music edition 1889), from which it passed into MHB. Later British books to include it were...
Drop, drop, slow tears. Phineas Fletcher* (1582-1650).
From Fletcher's Piscatorie Eclogs and other Poeticall Miscellanies (1633), where it is a short six-line poem entitled 'An Hymne', written in ten-syllabled lines, thus:
Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet...
In hymnals these were normally divided into lines of six and four syllables to make a total of twelve lines, divided into three stanzas:
Drop, drop, slow tears, And bathe those beauteous feet,Which brought from...
BUCHANAN, Dugald (Dughall Bochanan). b. Ardoch, Balquhidder, Perthshire, 1716; d. Ardoch, 2 July 1768. His diarydescribed his early manhood as a period of recklessness and ungodliness, profanity and vice (it is possible that he took the outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor (d. 1734), who lived at Balquhidder, as an example). He had some education in Stirling and Edinburgh, and worked for a time as an itinerant carpenter. During the 1740s he is believed to have spent some time at Glasgow at the Divinity...
McNEIL (sometimes McNeill), Duncan. b. Glasgow, 15 February 1877; d. Glasgow, 28 January 1933. McNeil was a travelling Scottish evangelist, based in Glasgow. He continued to live there, apart from a visit to the USA in 1927-30, where he was associated with Kimball Avenue United Evangelical Church, Chicago (1928-30).
McNeil published Duncan McNeil's Hymn Book (London and Glasgow: Pickering and Inglis, n.d., but dated 1923 in British Library Catalogue). It is said to include 'Song Testimonies'...
SPENSER, Edmund. b. London, ca. 1552; d. Westminster, London, 13 January 1599. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and Pembroke Hall, Cambridge (BA 1573, MA 1576). He was briefly secretary to John Young, bishop of Rochester, before entering the service of the Earl of Leicester (1579). In the same year he published The Shepheardes Calender. In 1580 he moved to Ireland as secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton, acquiring land there and restoring the ruined Kilcolman Castle, County Cork, ca....
VAUGHAN, Edmund. b. Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, 26 November 1827; d. Bishop Eton, Liverpool, 1 July 1908. Born at into a distinguished Roman Catholic family, he became a member of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (C.ss.R), the order of mission priests ('Redemptorists') founded by St Alphonsus Liguori*. He was a Novice in 1850, made his profession as a Redemptorist on 2 February 1852, and was ordained to the priesthood on 22 February 1852. He worked for a time in Australia, and was...
PRYS, Edmwnd. b. Llanrwst, Denbighshire, 1542/3; d. Maentwrog, Merioneth, 1623. He received his early education in the Grammar School of the Diocese of St Asaph. He went as a student to St John's College, Cambridge in 1565 (BA 1568, MA 1571). He was ordained deacon in 1567 and priest in 1568. He became a Fellow of St John's College in 1570, College Preacher in 1574, College chaplain in 1575, and University preacher in the same year. He was appointed to parishes in North Wales, a number of which...
CASWALL, Edward. b. Yateley, Hampshire, 15 July 1814; d. Birmingham, 2 January 1878. The son of a clergyman, he was educated at Chigwell, Essex and King Edward's Grammar School, Marlborough, Wiltshire. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford (BA 1836, MA 1838) and took Holy Orders (deacon, 1838, priest, 1839). He became Perpetual Curate of Stratford-sub-Castle, near Salisbury, where his uncle, Thomas Burgess, was bishop. He married in 1841, and in 1845 he and his wife went on a tour of the...
DENNY, (Sir) Edward. b. Dublin, 2 Oct 1796; d. London, 13 June 1889. He was the son of an Irish baronet, succeeding to the title in 1831. He was the owner of Tralee Castle, and of much of the county of Kerry, where he was an absentee landlord (living in London for most of his life) but a charitable and sympathetic one. In old age he remembered that he was converted by reading a novel about a Jesuit priest, Father Clement, by Grace Kennedy (Edinburgh, 1823), but he became a member of the...
ELGAR, (Sir) Edward William. b. Broadheath, Worcestershire, 2 June 1857; d. Worcester, 23 February 1934. At Broadheath his father, William Henry Elgar, ran a music retailing business and was organist of St George's Roman Catholic Church. Educated at Littleton House School and self-taught as a composer, Elgar was later to receive honorary degrees from several major universities. He was knighted in 1904, received the O.M. in 1911, and was appointed Master of the King's Music in 1924.
Elgar was...
HODGES, Edward. b. Bristol, England, 20 July 1796; d. Clifton, Bristol, 1 September 1867. Hodges was an organist, composer, and father of Faustina H. Hodges* and John Sebastian Bach Hodges*. Many hymnals include Edward Hodges's tune HYMN TO JOY, arranged from a melody in the finale of Beethoven's 9th symphony [Opus 125, 1824] as the setting for Henry van Dyke*'s 'Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee'*.
Edward's father, Archelaus Hodges (1767-1811), and mother, Elizabeth (Stephens) Hodges...
MOTE, Edward. b. London, 21 January 1797; d. Horsham, Sussex, 13 November 1874. He worked in London as a cabinet-maker. He was greatly influenced by the preaching of the Revd John Hyatt at George Whitefield*'s Tottenham Court Road chapel. Mote became a Baptist minister, serving as pastor of a Baptist Chapel at Horsham, Sussex (1852-74) until his death.
His hymn writing had begun long before his ordination: the hymn by which he is remembered, 'My hope is built on nothing less'*, was published...
SHILLITO, Edward. b. Hull, 4 July 1872; d. Buckhurst Hill, Essex, 1 March 1948. He was educated at Silcoates School, Wakefield, Yorkshire (founded as the Northern Congregational School), and Owens College, Manchester (later the University of Manchester). He trained for the Congregational ministry at Mansfield College, Oxford, and was ordained as an assistant at Ashton-under-Lyne, near Manchester (1896). He subsequently served at Tunbridge Wells (1898-1901), Brighton (1901-06), Harlesden,...
STEPHEN (Jones), Edward ('Tanymarian'). b. Maentwrog, Merioneth, 15 December 1822; d. 10 May 1885. Edward Jones took the name of Edward Stephen when a student. His father played the harp and his mother sang, and he himself studied music assiduously while working in the clothing trade, and then as a student of theology at the Congregational College, Bala. From 1847 he was minister of Horeb, Dwygyfylchi, near Conway, North Wales. He became known throughout Wales as a preacher, poet, lecturer,...
See 'Edward Stephen (Jones)'*
BLAXILL, (Edwin) Alec. b. Colchester, Essex, 16 March 1873; d. Colchester, 25 June 1953. He was educated at the Grammar School (later the Royal Grammar School) at Colchester, and lived all his life in the town. After leaving school he worked in the family business, which included a builders' merchants (which still exists). He was a member of Lion Walk Congregational Church at Hythe ( part of Colchester), and a teacher, and later Superintendent of the Sunday School there. He was elected to the...
FARJEON, Eleanor. b. Westminster, London, 13 February 1881; d. Hampstead, London, 5 June 1965. Born into a distinguished literary family, she became a writer herself, publishing books for both adults and children. Two of her books were memoirs: A Nursery in the Nineties (1935), about her childhood, and Edward Thomas: the Last Four Years (1958), recording her friendship with the poet who was killed in the Great War of 1914-1918. She published a book of poems, Pan Worship, in 1908; her Nursery...
See 'Howell Elvet Lewis'*
Elias Collection, Cambridge, UK
The Elias Library of Hymnology consists of just over 3,500 volumes on hymnology, mostly from the 19th and early 20th centuries, but with some dating back to the 16th century. It is held at Westminster College, Cambridge.
The Library is primarily the collection of Edward Alfred Elias. Born in Liverpool in 1875, he lived in West Kirby in the Wirral throughout his life; and though little more is known about him, he was a lifelong collector of hymnological works and...
WESTBURY, Eliza. b. Hackleton, Northamptonshire, 1808 (Baptized 22 May); d. 11 April 1828. She was a member of Hackleton Baptist Church (among its founders in 1781 had been the local shoemaker, William Carey, who became a famous missionary and was instrumental in establishing the Baptist Missionary Society). Westbury learned to read and write at Sabbath School. She was a lace-maker and a Particular Baptist. Converted to an evangelical faith in 1826, she subsequently wrote about 150 hymns: 71...
SCOTT, Elizabeth (Elizabeth Scott Williams Smith). b. Hitchin, Hertfordshire, 17 October 1708; d. Wethersfield, Connecticut Colony, 13 June 1776. She was the writer of several hymns that were widely published in England and New England during the 18th and 19th centuries, all of which are included in a manuscript volume identified by a label on its binding (but not inside) by the words 'Hymns and Poems by Elizabeth Scott', preserved in the Beinecke Library of Yale University. It contains 90...
ARMITAGE, Ella Sophia (née Bulley). b. Liverpool, 3 March 1841; d. Leeds, 20 March 1931. Born into a distinguished Congregationalist family, she was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she was one of the first five undergraduates (Newnham was one of the first colleges for women). She was a notable linguist, historian and archaeologist, working at Manchester University, from which she received an Honorary Degree. She married the Revd. Elkanah Armitage, a professor at the Yorkshire...
GOREH, Ellen Lakshmi. b. Benares (now Varanasi), India, 11 September 1853; d. Cawnpore (Kanpur), 1937. Her father, Nehemiah Goreh (later to become an influential priest of the Indian Church) had been excommunicated from his Brahmin caste for converting to the Christian faith. Her mother, Lakshmibai Jongalekar, died less than three months after her birth. Ellen was adopted by a Mrs Smailes, an indigo planter's wife. The Smailes lost their estate in the Indian Mutiny (1857-8) and were unable to...
HARRISON, Eluned (née Cornish). b. Cardiff, South Wales, 19 December 1934. She grew up in Dinas Powys, and was educated at Penarth County School for Girls and University College, London. She taught science at both school and college level. In 1960 she married Graham Stuart Harrison*, who was soon to become a long-serving church pastor in Newport. Of more than fifty hymns she has written, originally for use in personal devotion, the most in demand has been 'O Lord my God, I stand and gaze in...
BEVAN, (Emma) Frances (née Shuttleworth). b. Oxford, 25 September 1827; d. Cannes, France, 15 March 1909. Born at Oxford, the daughter of the Warden of New College, the anti-Tractarian Philip Shuttleworth, who became Bishop of Chichester in 1840. She married Robert Bevan, a banker, in 1856. She subsequently became a member of the Plymouth Brethren. She referred to herself as 'Frances Bevan' or 'F.B.'.
She published many books on religious topics, including Service of Song in the House of the...
HORNBY, Emma Christine. b. Buckingham, 12 January 1973. She was educated at the Royal Latin School, Buckingham before spending two years at Stowe School, where her father was a master. She then went to Worcester College, Oxford (BA 1994, DPhil, 1999). She was a Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College (1997-99), and held a College Lectureship in Music at Christ Church, Oxford (1999-2003). She was an editorial assistant, later assistant editor, on the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology...
The carol is in origin a secular round dance with singing, and the English carol is closely connected to the French carole, which flourished from the mid-12th to the mid-14th century. The stanzas, during which, as the word (from Italian stanze) indicates, all stood still, were sung by a solo voice, and all joined in the 'burden' during which the circle dance took place (on the connections between the carol and the goliard, see Goliards*).
The most accessible resources for those interested in...
Before the Reformation
English hymnody is as old as English poetry itself. The first known English poem is the hymn by Caedmon*, the lay helper at Whitby Abbey, dated between ca. 657 and 680. According to Bede* in his Historia Gentis Anglorum Ecclesiastica, Caedmon thought himself unable to sing but was visited by an angel who told him to sing of the Creation, whereupon he composed the hymn in Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse beginning 'Nu sculon hergan | heafonrices Weard' ('Now praise we the...
ROUTLEY, Erik Reginald. b. Brighton, Sussex, 31 October 1917; d. Nashville, Tennessee, USA, 8 October 1982. He was the only child of John, a businessman and town councillor who was Mayor of Brighton in 1936-37, and Eleanor, a homemaker and musician. He attended Fonthill Preparatory School, 1925-31 and Lancing College, 1931-36. He read Literae Humaniores (nicknamed 'Mods' and 'Greats': classics/ ancient history and philosophy) at Magdalen College, Oxford (BA 1940, MA 1943). He became an...
DODGSHUN, Ernest James. b. Leeds, 8 March 1876; d. St Briavels, Gloucestershire, 24 August 1944. He was educated at Silcoates School, Wakefield, founded for the children of nonconformist clergy; and then at St John's College, Cambridge. Although brought up in a Congregationalist family, he joined the Society of Friends in 1908. He gave up work as a businessman and became closely associated with the National Adult School Union (cf. George Currie Martin*), of which he became Secretary (1924-44)....
CARPENTER, (Joseph) Estlin. b. Ripley, Surrey, 5 October 1844; d. Oxford, 2 June 1927. He was born into a distinguished Unitarian family: his grandfather, Lant Carpenter, was a noted Unitarian minister and schoolmaster, who taught James Martineau*, who in turn taught Estlin ('Joseph' was usually dropped). The family moved to Hampstead, north London, and Estlin was educated at University College School, London, and the University of London, where he read mental and moral philosophy. He trained...
F.B.P. These initials appear over the text of 'Hierusalem my happie home' ('Jerusalem, my happy home'*) in a manuscript book in the British Library (Add. 15,225). The hymn is of 26 4-line stanzas, entitled 'A Song Mad (i.e. 'made') by F:B:P. To the tune of Diana.' The text is based on a passage from St. Augustine's Meditations beginning 'Mater Hierusalem, Civitas sancta Dei'. In the version ascribed to 'F.B.P.' the text suggests a Roman Catholic origin (as opposed to a Protestant text by W....
Fairest Lord Jesus. German, 17th century, translated by several hands.
Three stanzas of this German hymn, 'Schönster Herr Jesu'*, are taken from the version published by Richard Storrs Willis (1819-1900), in his Church Chorals and Choir Studies (New York, 1850), which printed the English and German texts:
Fairest Lord Jesus! Ruler of all nature! O Thou of God and Man the Son! Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor, Thou! my soul's glory, joy, and crown.
Fair are the...
Far from these narrow scenes of night. Anne Steele* (1716-1778).
This was published in Steele's Poems on Subjects, chiefly Devotional (1760), in 11 stanzas. It was preceded by 'The Promised Land. Isaiah XXXIII. 17.' This refers to the visionary verse which must have inspired Steele: 'Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off.' The text in the 1780 Edition of Poems..., chiefly Devotional was:
Far from these narrow scenes of night Unbounded...
Father, whate'er of earthly bliss. Anne Steele* (1717-1778).
This hymn is not found in JJ, but it was chosen for inclusion by the compilers of A&M (1904), and it remained in A&M books until it was omitted by the editors of A&MNS. It consists of the last three stanzas of a hymn in ten stanzas. The hymn in Steele's Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional (1760) was entitled 'Desiring Resignation and Thankfulness'. It began:
When I survey life's varied scene, Amid the darkest hours...
Filey Conference and its hymns
The Filey Christian Holiday Conference, sometimes called the 'Filey Convention' in imitation of the Keswick one, began in 1955. It was founded by an evangelist, A. Lindsay Glegg (1882-1975), President of the Movement for Worldwide Evangelization, following the Billy Graham 'Greater London Crusade' of 1954. It was held each September for a week at Butlin's holiday camp at Filey from 1955 until 1983, when Butlins closed its Filey camp. It moved to a similar camp at...
Fountain of mercy, God of love. Alice Flowerdew* (1759-1830).
This is from the Third Edition of Flowerdew's Poems, on Moral and Religious Subjects (1811). It was entitled 'Harvest Hymn', and is of some interest as preceding the general establishment of Harvest Festival services. It had six stanzas:
Fountain of mercy, God of love!
How rich Thy bounties are!
The rolling seasons, as they move,
Proclaim Thy constant care.
When, in the bosom of the earth,
The sower hid the grain,
...
OWEN, Frances Mary (née Synge). b. Glanmore Castle, County Wicklow, Ireland, 16 April 1842; d. Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, 19 June 1883. Born into the Irish landed gentry, she married (1870) the Revd J.A. Owen, sometime Fellow of University College, Oxford, and subsequently a housemaster at Cheltenham College. She helped her husband in the care of boys in his house, and also did much work in Cheltenham with friendless girls and the education of working people. Her influence in the town was so...
BOTTOME, Francis ('Frank'). b. Belper, Derbyshire, 26 May 1823; d. Tavistock, Devon, 29 June 1894. As a young man he was greatly influenced by the Methodists in his native town, and was called upon to preach to them. After training under Thomas Jackson and obtaining a local preacher's license, serving the Belper Circuit, he went to Guelph, Canada, as a missionary to the Native Americans. His health broke down, and he went to New York en route for England. In New York he recovered in the hands...
QUARLES, Francis. b. Romford, Essex, 1592 (baptized 8 May); d. London (?), 8 September 1644. He retained a strong connection with the county of his birth throughout his life. He was educated at a school 'in the countrey' (probably meaning the county) and then at Christ's College, Cambridge. After graduating in 1609, he studied at Lincoln's Inn, though he never practised law. He was secretary to Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh (ca. 1626-ca. 1630), returning to London and then to Roxwell, Essex...
ROUS, Francis. b. 1580/81; d. 7 December 1659. Born the son of a Cornish nobleman, Sir Anthony Rous, he was a child prodigy, educated at Broadgates Hall (later Pembroke College), Oxford (BA 1597), and at the age of 16 writing a Spenserian poem, Thule, or, Virtue's History (published 1598). He matured into a serious man of affairs and politician, with a strong sympathy for the Puritan cause. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1626 to 1629, returning in 1640 after the period in which...
BARTHÉLÉMON, François Hippolyte. b. Bordeaux, France, 27 July 1741; d. Southwark, London, 20 July 1808. The son of a wig-maker, he may have served briefly in the army as a young man, but this is not certain. A talented violinist, he went to Paris where he played in the orchestra of the Comédie Italienne, moving to London in 1764. In London his skill was much valued: he gave solo recitals, and became the leader of the orchestra at the King's Theatre. He wrote an opera, Pelopida (1766), and an...
BAKER, Frank. b. Kingston upon Hull, UK, 15 April 1910; d. Durham, North Carolina, 11 October 1999. In a fine tribute by John E. Vickers in the Second Edition of Baker's John Wesley and the Church of England (Peterborough, 2000), we read that Frank gave his life to Jesus Christ during the 'Humberside Crusade' in the winter of 1924. This led to his becoming a local preacher and then answering the call to full-time ministry in the Primitive Methodist Church. Because of what seems today to have...
FOSTER, Frederick William. b. Bradford, Yorkshire, 1 August 1760; d.Ockbrook, near Derby, 12 April 1835. Foster was a Moravian, educated at Fulneck, near Leeds at the Settlement there, and then at the Moravian Settlement at Barby, Germany. He became a minister in the Moravian Church, and was made a Bishop in 1818. He compiled a Supplement (1808) to A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the Protestant Church of the United Brethren (1801), edited by John Swertner*, re-titled Liturgy and Hymns for...
Full Salvation! Full Salvation! Francis Bottome* (1823-1894).
According to JJ, p. 164, this hymn was first published in 'a collection by Dr Cullis of Boston, 1873', but this has not been verified. JJ was referring to Charles Cullis (1833-1892), a physician who specialized in faith healing. Cullis's Faith Hymns appeared in a number of editions published by the Willard Tract Repository, Boston, from 1870 onwards (Bottome's hymn was not in the 1870 edition, but was certainly in one of 1887;...
Gaelic Psalm singing
Gaelic-speaking congregations of the Presbyterian church confine their congregational praise to the singing of metrical Psalms. This dates from the Reformation in Scotland in 1560, when one of the requirements of reform was that ordinary people should not be deprived of participation in church worship, hitherto the prerogative of clergy and church choirs. For this purpose the Psalms of David, as part of Holy Scripture, were chosen as texts. The folk tunes of British and...
BUCHANAN, George. b. Killearn, near Glasgow, February 1506; d. Edinburgh, 28 September 1582. He was educated at the University of Paris (1520-22), the University of St Andrews (BA 1525), and the Scots College in Paris (BA 1527, MA 1528). After a successful early career in Paris, he returned to Scotland in 1537, where he wrote Somnium, a satire on the Franciscans. At this time he was still a Catholic, but a critical one. Imprisoned in 1539 during a persecution of Lutheran sympathisers, he...
COTTON, George Edward Lynch. b. Chester, 29 October 1813; d. Kushtai, India, 6 October 1866. He was the son of an army officer, who was killed in the Peninsular War on 13 November 1813, two weeks after the birth of his son. George was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College Cambridge (BA, 1836), becoming a master under Thomas Arnold at Rugby School in 1837 (in Thomas Hughes's famous novel about Rugby School, Tom Brown's Schooldays, Cotton is 'the young master'). He was appointed...
HERBERT, George. b. Montgomery, 3 April 1593; d. Bemerton, near Salisbury, 1 March 1633. Born of a noble family at Montgomery Castle, he was one of seven sons and three daughters. He was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge (BA 1613, MA and Fellow of the College, 1616). In 1618 he was appointed Reader in Rhetoric at Cambridge and was Public Orator to the University, 1620-28. He represented Montgomery in parliament in 1624 and 1625, and appeared to be on the threshold of...
RAWSON, George. b. Leeds, 5 June 1807; d. Bristol, 24 March 1889. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School. He became a solicitor and practised in Leeds, where he was also an active Congregationalist. He assisted George William Conder* and other local figures in the preparation of an influential Congregationalist collection entitled Psalms, Hymns, and Passages of Scripture for Christian Worship, usually called the 'Leeds Hymn Book' (1853). He then assisted the Baptists in the compilation...
ROBINSON, George Wade. b. Cork, Ireland, 1838; d. Brighton, 28 January 1877. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, before training for the Congregational ministry at New College, London. He served as a Congregational minister at Dublin, London, Dudley (near Birmingham) and Brighton. During his short life he published Lays of a Heart (1867), Iona and other Sonnets (Dublin, 1868), Loveland and Other Poems, chiefly concerning Love (1870, Second Edition, 1873), and Songs in God's World...
CONDER, George William. b. Hitchin, Hertforshire, 30 November 1821; d. Forest Hill, London, 8 November 1874. He was educated at Hitchin Grammar School. He then went to London to make a career in business, becoming a member of King's Weigh House Chapel under the ministry of Thomas Binney*. Binney encouraged him to enter the Congregational Church ministry, and he trained at Highbury College before serving at High Wycombe (1845-47), Ryde, Isle of Wight (1847-49), and Belgrave Chapel, Leeds...
WITHER, George. b. Bentworth, Hampshire, (probably) 11 June 1588; d. London, 2 May 1667. He briefly attended Magdalen College, Oxford (ca. 1604-05), but owing to his father's money difficulties left without taking a degree. He entered the Middle Temple in 1615. He was imprisoned in the Marshalsea for his satirical publication Abuses Stript, and Whipt (1613), and again for his poem 'Wither's motto' (1621). At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 he raised a troop of horse for Parliament (his...
LATTY, Geraldine. b. 1963. Latty is a British songwriter and performer of West Indian descent. Her diverse religious background includes time spent in Pentecostal, Methodist and Baptist churches. A music graduate of Bath University, she taught music in a Catholic school in Bristol for twelve years. She has also taught a range of music courses at the London School of Theology and Dordt University, Iowa. She has released six solo albums of her own music and has also featured prominently in...
TICKLE, Gilbert Young. b. Maryport, Cumberland (now Cumbria), 30 June 1819; d. Liverpool, 21 April 1888. Tickle was the greatest hymn-writer among Churches of Christ in Great Britain and Ireland. He was born in Maryport, the thirteenth in a family of sixteen, and after education in a dame's school, finishing with a master, he was apprenticed to a draper in Carlisle at the age of 14. Brought up in a hyper-Calvinist Scotch Baptist family, he became a Sunday School teacher in the Independent...
Glory to thee my God, this night. Thomas Ken* (1637-1711).
This evening hymn shares its origins with the morning hymn, 'Awake, my soul, and with the sun'*, and its early history is described under that heading. Like the morning hymn, it exists in a pamphlet, A Morning and Evening Hymn, Formerly made by a Reverend Bishop of 1692, as follows:
All Praise to thee, my God, this Night;
For all the blessings of the Light.
Keep me, O keep me, King of Kings
Under thine own Almighty...
God be in my head. 15th century, author and provenance unknown. The first trace of this very moving verse is in a French text dating from ca. 1490:
Jesus soit en ma teste et mon entendement.
Jesus soit en mes yeulx et mon regardement.
Jesus soit en ma bouche et mon parlement.
Jesus soit en mon cueur et en mon pensement.
Jesus soit en ma vie et mon trespassement. Amen.
The English text is found in a Book of Hours printed by Robert Pynson at London, Hore beate marie/virginis ad vsum in/signis ac...
God calling yet. Gerhard Tersteegen* (1697-1769), translated by Sarah Laurie Findlater* (1823-1907), altered by Lowell Mason* (1792-1872) and co-editors.
This translation of Tersteegen's 'Gott rufet noch. Sollt ich nicht endlich hören'* was first published in the Second Series of Hymns from the Land of Luther (1855). The hymns in that book were translated by both Findlater and her older sister, Jane Laurie Borthwick*, but there is no doubt of the authorship of the present hymn because...
God is love: let heaven adore him. Timothy Rees* (1874-1939).
From The Mirfield Mission Hymn-Book (1922), and republished in J.L. Rees's Sermons and Hymns by Timothy Rees, Bishop of Llandaff (1946). Its first appearance in a major hymn-book was in BBCHB (1951), set to ABBOT'S LEIGH. It was included in 100HfT and thus in A&MNS, and has been retained in A&MCP and A&MRW. There have been a number of alterations to the original text. It has subsequently become one of the most popular of...
God named Love, whose fount Thou art. Elizabeth Barrett Browning* (1806-1861).
From The Seraphim, and other poems (1838). This book, besides containing 'The Sleep' (see 'Of all the thoughts of God, that are'* and 'What would we give to our beloved'*), has a sequence of four hymns. The present text is 'Hymn I', entitled 'A Supplication for Love'. It had nine 4-line stanzas, with an unusual accent in line 1 ('namèd') to make up the eight syllables:
God, namèd Love, whose fount Thou art, Thy...
God of love and truth and beauty. Timothy Rees* (1874-1939).
From The Mirfield Mission Hymn-Book (1922), where it is dated 1916. It was included in BBCHB, to a tune, CAROLYN, commissioned from Herbert Murrill (1909-1952), then head of music at the BBC. It appeared subsequently in 100HfT (1969) and thus in A&MNS, headed 'Hallowed be thy name'; it is also in HP. It is little known outside Britain, although in the USA it was included in Rejoice in the Lord (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1985), of...
God sends us the Spirit. Tom Colvin* (1925-2000).
Written in Ghana during Colvin's period of missionary service, 1959-1964, and set to the melody of a Gonja folk song originally in praise of the tribe and its past leaders. The text was written, according to the author, for 'churches, particularly new churches, where the Spirit is experienced as a powerful presence'. It is included in several standard collections, and captures both the intimacy and the transformative power of the Holy Spirit....
GODRIC (Saint). b. Norfolk, ca. 1070; d. Finchale, County Durham, 21 May 1170. Born to an Anglo-Saxon couple in the early years following the Norman Conquest, Godric became a pedlar and then a trader with European countries. He travelled widely, making pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostella. At some point in the early 12th century (ca. 1104-05) he sold all his goods and became a hermit, first at Whitby and then at Finchale, on the banks of the river Wear near Durham. There...
God's spirit is in my heart ('Go, tell everyone'). Alan Dale* (1902-1979 and Hubert Richards* (1921-2010).
This modern hymn with refrain has become very popular in Britain since it was published in Ten Gospel Songs (1969). That book was a collaboration between Dale and Richards (1921-2010). Richards composed the tune for guitar to fit Dale's stanza 1 and refrain ('He sent me to bring the good news to the poor'). These had been published in Dale's New World: The Heart of the New Testament in...
BELL, Gordon William. b. Durham, England, 7 September 1943. He was the only child of William Wallace Bell and Gladys Winifred (née Collinson). He was brought up in Durham, in a musical family, and attending the Durham Academy of Music (1958-60). In 1961 he commenced his career in hospital management, obtaining the Diploma of Health Service Management (1971). In 1979 he moved to Aberdeen, as Records and Information Officer for Grampian, followed by Quality Assurance Officer. He retired from the...
Gracious Power, the world pervading. William Johnson Fox* (1786-1864).
First published in Fox's Hymns and Anthems (1841), in six 3-line stanzas. It is a characteristic Unitarian hymn, addressing God as the 'Gracious Power' that gives wisdom, light and love, and is the soul of thought and feeling:
Gracious Power, the world pervading,Blessing all, and none upbraiding, We are met to worship thee.
Not in formal adorations,Nor with servile depredations, But in spirit true and free.
By thy...
KENDRICK, Graham Andrew. b. Blisworth, Northamptonshire, 2 August 1950. He was the son of a Baptist minister; the family later moved to Essex and London. He started composing songs at 15 years of age, having taught himself to play the piano. In response to the Church's lack of connection with youth culture during the 1960s, he formed an early interest in the use of rock and folk music for outreach and evangelism.
He trained as an English/Ceramics teacher at Avery Hill College, Kent, but...
GRESFORD is the name of a British hymn tune without words, to be played (usually by a brass band) while the congregation are silent in memory of a tragic event. It was written in the north-east of England in 1936 to commemorate the name of Gresford colliery at Wrexham (Wrecsam), North Wales, where there was a mining disaster in September 1934, when 266 miners were killed in an underground explosion.
It was composed by Robert Saint (b. Hebburn, South Tyneside, 20 November 1905; d. 15 December...
JONES, Griffith Hugh ('Gutyn Arfon'). b. Ty Du, Llanberis, Caernarfonshire, January 1849; d. Rhiwddolion, Caernarfonshire, 26 July 1919. He attended music classes held by John Roberts* ('Ieuan Gwyllt') and worked as a teacher in Dolbadarn and Aberystwyth before becoming headmaster of Rhiwddolion primary school near Betws-y-coed. He founded a number of music classes in the area and encouraged instrumental music. His fame now rests on his hymn tune LLEF (the word means 'a cry'), a solemn yet...
Guide me, O thou great Jehovah/Redeemer (Arglwydd, arwain trwy'r anialwch). William Williams, Pantycelyn* (1717-1791).
This hymn, by the greatest of all the Welsh hymn writers, is the best known of all the Welsh hymns in English.
The original Welsh hymn, with six stanzas, originally appeared in Williams' collection Caniadau y rhai sydd ar y Môr o Wydr ('The Songs of those upon the Sea of Glass', Carmarthen, 1762) (JJ, p.77, wrongly ascribed it to the pamphlet Alleluia, Bristol 1745, and this...
See 'Griffith Hugh Jones'*
WILLIAMS, Gwilym Owen. b. East Finchley, North London, 23 March 1913; d. Bangor, 23 December 1990. Although born in London he was brought up in the North Wales village of Penisarwaun, and educated there and at Brynrefall Grammar School, Llanberis. From there he went to Jesus College, Oxford, where he read English (BA 1933) and then Theology (BA 1935). He took Holy Orders (deacon 1937, priest 1938) in the Church in Wales, and became successively curate of Denbigh (1937-40), chaplain and...
Hail glorious angels, heirs of light. John Austin* (1613-1669).
First published in Austin's Devotions in the Antient Way of Offices (Paris, 1668), in the section 'Office of the Saints', where it was prescribed in 'Lauds for Saints'. It is a selection from a hymn of eleven 4-line stanzas, beginning with two not used in modern books:
Wake all my hopes, lift up your eys, And crown your heads with mirth· See how they shine beyond the skys, Who once dwelt on our earth.
Peace busy thoughts,...
Hark, my soul, how everything. John Austin* (1613-1669).
From Austin's Devotions in the Antient Way of Offices (1668), where it is the hymn for Lauds on Monday, with the first line as 'every Thing'. It found its way, via George Hickes's Reformed Devotions, into John Wesley*'s first hymn book, the Collection of Psalms and Hymns (Charlestown, 1737), where Wesley altered the metre from 7.7.7.7. to 8.8.8.8., probably for the sake of a tune, thus:
Hark, my dull Soul, how every Thing
Strives to adore...
Hark, 'tis the Saviour of Mankind. John Murray* (ca. 1740-1815).
This is the last of five hymns, all first published in the 1782 edition of Christian Hymns, Poems and Sacred Sons, Sacred to the Praise of God, Our Saviour, compiled by English Universalist James Relly* and his brother John Relly. The book was first published in London in 1754, and the 1782 edition was published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for Noah Parker (1734-1787), a convert of Murray's and preacher in Portsmouth (Brewster,...
YARDLEY, Harold Francis. b. Salford, Lancashire, England, 11 March 1911; d. 10 October 1990. Yardley received an elementary education at Nicholls Hospital (1919-25) and worked as an office boy and as a farm labourer before emigrating in 1929 to Ontario, where he eventually settled in Toronto, working in the magazine and book wholesaling trade. He was unemployed during the early years of the Depression, and United Church superintendents in Toronto persuaded him to undertake lay pastoral work in...
Have you had a kindness shown. Henry Burton* (1840-1930).
Written at Acton on 8 April 1885, and first printed in The Christian Advocate (New York, 1886), and in Burton's Wayside Songs of the Inner and the Outer Life (1886). JJ quoted from the author's manuscript:
This is based on a little incident in the life of my brother-in-law, the Rev. Mark Guy Pearse. When a boy returning home from a Moravian school in Holland, the steward of the boat on which he sailed from Bristol to Hayle showed him...
He that is down needs fear no fall. John Bunyan* (1628-1688).
This song is from Part II of The Pilgrim's Progress (1684). It is sung by the shepherd boy in the Valley of Humiliation, 'the best and most fruitful piece of ground in all those parts'. He sings to the pilgrims from his own experience. Mr Greatheart, the guide of the pilgrims, draws attention to the shepherd boy's contentment in a simple life:
Then said their guide, do you hear him? I will dare to say, that this boy lives a merrier...
He wants not friends that hath thy love. Richard Baxter* (1615-1691).
The hymn as it stands in most books, with the first line as above, is a selection of verses from Baxter's poem 'The Resolution', dated 3 December 1663, with a note, 'Psal. 119. 96. Written when I was Silenced and cast out, &c.'. The 'Silenced and cast out' refers to the exclusion under the Act of Uniformity on St Bartholomew's Day 1662 of those incumbents who were not prepared to adhere strictly to the Book of Common...
WILLIAMS, Helen Maria. b. London, 17 June 1759; d. Paris, 15 December 1827. Her father, Charles Williams, died in 1762, and her widowed mother brought up Helen Maria and two other children in Berwick upon Tweed, on the Scottish border. The family returned to London in 1781, where Helen Maria began to make a name for herself as a young poet, encouraged by Andrew Kippis*, her Presbyterian/Unitarian minister. Her Poems were published in 1786, containing the two hymns noted in JJ (see below). She...
FRY, Henrietta Joan. b. Bristol, 6 December 1799; d. Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, 1860. She was the daughter of Joseph Storrs Fry, a wealthy chocolate maker, and a Quaker, part of the celebrated 'Fry's Chocolate' dynasty.
She was a fine linguist. She published translations from the hymns of Johann Kaspar Lavater* with the title The Pastors' Legacy; or Devotional Fragments from the German of Lavater (Bristol and London, 1842). She noted that they were taken from Hundert Sentenzen von Seligen...
AINSWORTH, Henry. b. Swanton Morley (north west of Norwich), Norfolk, 1569 (baptized 15 January 1570); d. 1622. He was educated at Swanton Morley and at St John's College, Cambridge, moving to Gonville and Caius College, where he excelled at Hebrew but left in 1591 without taking a degree. He developed Separatist views, and was at variance with the Church of England, and also with other sectarians. At some point in the 1590s he emigrated to Holland, living in Amsterdam, where he continued his...
BURTON, Henry. b. Swannington, Leicestershire, 26 November 1840; d. West Kirby, Hoylake, Cheshire, 27 April 1930. As a young man Burton went with his family when they emigrated to the USA in 1856. They settled in Wisconsin, and Henry studied at Beloit College, then fairly new (founded 1846). He became a local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was in charge of a church at Monroe, Wisconsin, for a short time. He then returned to Britain: he was ordained into the Wesleyan Methodist...
LAWES, Henry. b. Dinton, Wiltshire, 1596 (baptized 5 January); d. London, 21 October 1662. His early career was as teacher of music in the household of the Earl of Bridgewater. In 1626 he was appointed to the Chapel Royal, and in 1631 he became a musician in the King's Musick. At the Restoration of 1660 he was reinstated to these positions, becoming additionally 'Composer in ye Private Musick for Lutes and Voices'. He was famous in his own time, holding concerts at his house which were attended...
MORLEY, Henry (L.). b. Bishopsgate, London, probably 1 October 1834; d. date and place unknown. Morley was a music teacher, and organist of St Paul's, Herne Hill, south-east London, until 1883. He is believed to have emigrated to the USA at some time after that date (Handbook to the Church Hymnary, 1927). He is identified as the composer of the tune NEWCASTLE on the evidence of a letter from Edwin Moss, editor of the London Tune Book (1875, not 1877 as is sometimes stated), to Carey Bonner*...
VAUGHAN, Henry, b. Newton-by-Usk, Llansanffraid, Breconshire, April 1622; d. Llansanffraid, 23 April 1695. Born into an old, though impoverished, Welsh family, he was educated by a clergyman-schoolmaster, Matthew Herbert of Llangattock, and then at Jesus College, Oxford, from 1638. Leaving in 1640 before taking his degree, Vaughan then studied law in London at the wish of his father. Attempting to escape the consequences of the Civil War (he fought on the Royalist side), he returned to South...
Here is love, vast as the ocean. William Rees* (1802-1883), translated by William Edwards (1848-1929) and Howell Elvet Lewis* (1860-1953).
This is Rees's best known and finest hymn, dating from some time in the 1870s. In the manner of earlier Moravian and Methodist hymns, there is an intense focus on the shedding of Christ's blood, which Rees explores through a series of water-inspired metaphors in the second stanza. Though Edwards' translation is somewhat free, he faithfully preserves this...
Holy Spirit, ever dwelling. Timothy Rees* (1874-1939).
From The Mirfield Mission Hymn-Book (Mirfield, 1922), where the date of composition was given as 1922, and in John Lambert Rees's Sermons and Hymns by Timothy Rees, Bishop of Llandaff (1946). It was written in four 8-line stanzas, but it was shortened to three in Sermons and Hymns. The original stanza 4 was:
Holy Spirit, fount and channel
Of the sevenfold gifts of grace,
May we in our hearts for ever
Give to holy fear a place.
Fill...
How blest the righteous when he dies. Anna Letitia Barbauld* (1742-1825).
According to JJ, p.1107, this was published in the Leisure Hour Improved (Ironbridge, 1809) with the first line as 'Sweet is the scene when virtue dies'. It was then included in The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, with memoir by Lucy Aikin (1825), with the title 'The Death of the Virtuous'. It had five stanzas:
Sweet is the scene when Virtue dies! - When sinks a righteous soul to rest, How mildly beam the closing...
How blest the sacred tie that binds. Anna Letitia Barbauld* (1742-1825).
This was entitled 'Pious Friendship'. It was written, when Barbauld and her husband were living in Suffolk, for the marriage of Sarah Rigby and Caleb Parry at Palgrave in October 1778. Parry was a graduate of the Warrington Academy (McCarthy and Kraft, 1994, p. 274). The hymn was published in Barbauld's Poems (1792):
How blest the sacred tie that binds In union sweet according minds! How swift the heavenly course they...
How few receive with cordial faith. William Robertson, d. 1745*.
According to James Mearns* in JJ, p. 536, this paraphrase of Isaiah 53 ('Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?') was identified by the daughter of William Cameron* as having been written by William Robertson for the unpublished Translations and Paraphrases of 1745, and amended by John Logan* for the Scottish Translations and Paraphrases in Verse of 1781. Mearns noted that it was 'still in C.U....
How lovely is thy dwelling place. Scottish Psalter*, 1564 onwards.
This metrical psalm was the version of Psalm 84 in the first Scottish psalm book after the Reformation, entitled The forme and ministration of the sacraments &c. used in the English church at Geneva, approved and received by the Church of Scotland. Whereunto besydes that was in the former bokes, are also added sondrie other prayers, with the whole psalms of David in English meter (Edinburgh: Robert Lekprevik, 1564). Psalm...
BLAIR, Hugh. b. Edinburgh, 7 April 1718; d. Edinburgh, 27 September 1800. According to James Mearns* (JJ, pp. 144-5), he was educated at the University of Edinburgh from 1730 (when he was twelve years of age), graduating MA in 1739 (Mearns gives his death date as 27 December 1800). He was licensed to preach in October 1741, and became minister of Collessie, Fife, in 1742. He moved as second minister to the Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh, in 1743, and to Lady Yester's Kirk (see William Robertson, d....
Humbly in your sight we come together, Lord. J.P. Chirwa (d. 1940), translated by Tom Colvin* (1925-2000).
This is a translation of 'Tiza Pantazi Pinu', a hymn in Tumbuka, a Bantu language spoken in northern Malawi and some neighbouring countries. The first line appears as above in Colvin's Fill us with your love (1983), and then in Songs of God's People (1988), World Praise (1993), Glory to God (1994), and Sing Glory (1999). In Colvin's last book, Come, let us walk this road together (1997),...
Hush'd was the evening hymn. James Drummond Burns* (1823-1864).
This hymn of five stanzas on 1 Samuel 3: 3-10 was entitled 'The Child Samuel', and published in The Evening Hymn (1857). This book, published by Nelsons of London, consisted of an original hymn and prayer for every evening in the month. In 1869, when James Hamilton's Memoir and Remains of the Late Rev. James D. Drummond was posthumously published, Hamilton had included a section 'Selected by his desire from ''The Evening Hymn,''...
The Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland was founded in 1936 by a group of enthusiasts brought together on the initiative of Dr J.R. Fleming with the aim of 'encouraging and promoting among interested people intelligent and systematic study of the rich resources of the Church's praise'. Membership was open to 'scholars who had already done published work in the field of hymnody' and also to 'ordinary members' with an interest in the subject. From the start a principal task was to up-date...
Hymns for Prayer and Praise (1996). Hymns for Prayer and Praise was published by the Canterbury Press for the Panel of Monastic Musicians in 1996. It was intended primarily for use in monastic and religious communities, but also in churches in which daily prayer is offered with music. It acknowledges a debt to the Liber Hymnarius of the monks of Solesmes (1983), but its texts are in English, with a small selection of Latin hymns at the end of the book (501-515). The first five hundred hymns...
See 'Hymnum canamus gloriae'*
Hymnum canamus gloriae. Bede* (673/4-735).
This hymn for Vespers at Ascension-tide is attributed to the Venerable Bede. It exists in two forms: as 'Hymnum canamus Domino'*, and with the first line as above. In Daniel, Thesaurus Hymnologicus I. 206-7, it is given as 'Hymnum canamus gloriae'. In Walpole, Early Latin Hymns, pp. 371-3, and in Milfull, Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church, pp. 294-5, it is 'Hymnum canamus Domino'. The title in Milfull is 'Ymnus in Ascensione Domini ad Vesperam'. See also...
I am thinking today of that beautiful land. Eliza E. Hewitt* (1851-1920).
This hymn is usually dated 1897, following its publication in Songs of Love and Praise, No. 4 (Philadelphia, 1897). It is frequently known as 'Will there be any stars', from the first line of the refrain:
Will there be any stars, any stars in my crown, When at evening the sun goeth down? When I wake with the blest, In the mansions of rest, Will there be any stars in my crown?
It had three stanzas:
I am thinking today...
I cannot tell why He, whom angels worship. William Young Fullerton* (1857-1932).
This four-stanza hymn was written to be sung to LONDONDERRY AIR, the plangent tune from Fullerton's native Northern Ireland. Probably the first use of the tune with a hymn was in SofP (1925), when it was set to Frank Fletcher*'s 'O Son of Man, our hero strong and tender'*.
The date of composition of the words is uncertain, but must be before 1930, when they were printed in a Baptist supplement for young...
I waited for the Lord my God. Scottish Psalter, 1650.
This metrical version of Psalm 40 has 17 stanzas in The Psalms of David in Metre of 1781 and The Scottish Psalter, 1929, but the text that is customarily used in worship is from stanzas 1-4:
I waited for the Lord my God, and patiently did bear; At length to me he did incline My voice and cry to hear.
He took me from a fearful pit, and from the miry clay, And on a rock he set my feet, establishing my way.
He put a new song in my...
I would I were at last at home. Heinrich von Laufenburg* (ca. 1390- ca. 1460), translated by Catherine Winkworth* (1827-1878).
The German text, beginning 'Ich wollte, dass ich daheime wär', is found in the copy of the Strasbourg manuscript used by Wackernagel, dated 1429 (modern books date it 1430) and printed in Das Deutsche Kirchenlied, II. pp. 540. James Mearns* adds a typically learned reference to manuscript sources and to 19th-century printings of the German text (JJ, p. 507). ...
BRADLEY, Ian Campbell. b. Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, 28 May 1950. Ian Bradley was educated at Tonbridge School and New College, Oxford (BA 1971, MA, DPhil, 1974), where he won the Arnold Historical Essay Prize in 1971 and was Harold Salvesen Junior Fellow from 1972 to 1975. After a period working at the BBC and on The Times, followed by a time as a schoolmaster, free-lance author and broadcaster, he entered the University of St Andrews, where he studied for the BD and for the Church of...
Iesu dulcis memoria. Latin, 12th century, author unknown.
This hymn is given in Daniel, Thesaurus Hymnologicus I. 227-9, as the work of St Bernard of Clairvaux*, but more recent research has noted that the earliest manuscripts containing it are of English origin, and it has been tentatively ascribed to an English monk of the 12th century (see F. J. E. Raby, 'The Poem “Dulcis Iesu Memoria”', Bulletin of the Hymn Society, 33 (October 1945), pp. 1-6, and Maurice Frost, Historical Companion to...
In God's most holy presence. Ernest James Dodgshun* (1876-1944).
This was published in the Fellowship Hymn-Book (1909). It was one of the earliest hymns by Dodgshun, who had joined the Society of Friends in 1908, and who later gave up work as a businessman to join the National Adult School Union, of which he became Secretary in 1924. It remained in the 1933 revision of FHB, published by the NASU and The Brotherhood Movement, Incorporated. Dodgshun and his wife Mary were members of the...
In the secret of His presence how my soul delights to hide. Ellen Lakshmi Goreh* (1853-1937).
First published in Goreh's 'From India's Coral Strand': Hymns of Christian Faith (1883). It was entitled 'My Refuge', and was based on a text from Psalm 31: 20. Ira D. Sankey* introduced it to the British public during the London Winter Mission of 1883-4:
The hymn at once came into general favor, and the deeply spiritual tone of the words brought blessing to many. The song was afterwards published in...
Infant holy, infant lowly. Edith Margaret Gellibrand Reed* (1885-1933).
This is a translation of a Polish carol, beginning 'W Żłobie Leży', found in Spiewniczek Piesni Koscielne (1908), thought to be from the 13th or 14th century (Milgate, 1982, p. 104). Gillibrand's translation was published in Music and Youth I/12 (December 1921), and later published in the Congregational Church's School Worship (1926), after which it became very popular:
Infant holy, infant lowly, For his bed a cattle...
The Iona Community was founded in Scotland in 1938 by the Revd George MacLeod, later Lord MacLeod of Fiunary. It rebuilt the ancient monastic buildings on the island of Iona, from which St Columba* sent out missionaries such as St Aidan to convert Scotland and the north of England in the 6th century. With the rebuilding of the abbey of Iona, the Community has sought also the 'rebuilding of the common life', bringing together (in the words of its website) 'work and worship, prayer and politics,...
I was agreeably surprised. I have not heard better singing either at Bristol or Lincoln. Many, both men and women, have admirable voices; and they sing with good judgement. Who would have expected this in the Isle of Man?
So wrote John Wesley*, in tones of some surprise, on 6 June 1781. His diary entry is one of the very first eye-witness accounts of Manx singing and suggests that there was already established on the Island a firm tradition of a congregational style that would have been...
I've found a friend in Jesus, He's everything to me. Charles William Fry* (1837-1882).
A note found by Fry's widow after his death indicated that this hymn had been written in June 1881 at Lincoln at the house of a friend called Wilkinson. Before Fry's death, however, it had been sung at a holiness convention at the Wesleyan Chapel at City Road, London, on 20 December 1881. It was first published in The War Cry (29 December 1881), and then in Salvation Music Vol 2 (1883). In the USA it was...
WATSON, John Richard. b. Ipswich, Suffolk, 15 June 1934. Richard Watson was educated at Magdalen College School, Oxford and (after National Service in the Royal Artillery, 1953-55) at Magdalen College, Oxford (BA 1958, MA 1964; Matthew Arnold Memorial Prize, 1962). After two years as a teacher of English at Loretto School near Edinburgh, he became a post-graduate student at the University of Glasgow, gaining his PhD (1966) with a study of William Wordsworth, and being awarded the Ewing Prize...
DECK, James George. b. Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, 1 November 1807 (JJ gives 1802); d. Motueka, near Nelson, New Zealand, 14 August 1884. He was educated under one of Napoleon's generals to serve in the army, and posted to India in 1824. His religious interests were strengthened by conversion in England in 1826, and he returned to India to witness for Christ among his brother officers. He resigned his commission in 1835. He left the army with the intention of becoming a priest of the Church of...
MARTINEAU, James. b. Norwich, 21 April 1805; d. London, 11 Jan 1900. He was born into a Unitarian family of Huguenot descent, and educated at Norwich Grammar School and at the school at Bristol run by the distinguished Unitarian Dr Lant Carpenter. He became an engineering apprentice at Derby, but decided to become a Unitarian minister and entered Manchester College, then at York, in 1822. In 1828 he became minister of Eustace Street Presbyterian Meeting House, Dublin, and in 1832 moved to...
MONTGOMERY, James. b. Irvine, Ayrshire, 4 November 1771; d. Sheffield, 30 April 1854. His father was minister of the Moravian congregation at Irvine. He was educated at the Moravian school at Fulneck, Pudsey, near Leeds. In 1783, his parents went as Moravian missionaries to Barbados, where they both died of fever when he was about twenty years old. He was apprenticed to a baker in Mirfield, Yorkshire, but was more interested in writing poetry or playing and composing music. He ran away from the...
WEDDERBURN, James. b. Dundee, Scotland, ca. 1495; d. Dieppe or Rouen, France, 1553. James was the eldest of (probably) four brothers, the son of a merchant of Dundee. The others were John*, Robert and Henry (there may have been others). James was a student at St Andrews University (matriculated 1514), but left without taking a degree. He became a merchant in northern France, but returned at some point before 1539 to Dundee. He wrote two plays, The Beheading of Johne the Baptist and The Historie...
UTENHOVE, Jan. b. the Netherlands, ca. 1520; d. London, 6 January 1566. Utenhove was a leading lay Reformer in the Calvinist tradition, born into a Flemish aristocratic family with strong connections with Erasmus. He was obliged to leave Ghent in 1544, almost certainly because of adverse reaction to a play he had written and performed. Thereafter he travelled widely in Europe, staying in Heinrich Bullinger's Zürich, Martin Bucer*'s and Peter Martyr's Strassburg, Thomas Cranmer's London, and...
CREWDSON, Jane (née Fox). b. Perran-ar-worthal, Cornwall, 22 October 1809; d. Whalley Range, Manchester, 14 September 1863. As a young woman she moved with her family to Exeter in 1825. There she met Thomas D. Crewdson, a Manchester manufacturer, whom she married in 1836. The marriage is recorded in the Register of Marriages of the Devon Quarterly Meeting of the Society of Friends: the Crewdsons were a notable Quaker family, originally from Kendal. She was a strong supporter of the Reformation....
DIBBLE, Jeremy Colin. b. 17 September 1958. He grew up in Theydon Bois, Essex where his first musical education was as a chorister at St Mary's Church (1965-72). Educated at Buckhurst Hill County High School (1970-77), he was a pupil of John Rippin, then organist and choirmaster at St Paul's, Chingford. Rippin's influence was profound, not only inculcating a love of English church music, but also an interest in British music of the 19th and 20th centuries. An Open Exhibitioner at Trinity...
Jerusalem, my happy home. Author unknown, ca. 1580. This hymn exists in many versions, most of which come from two sources:
British Library Add. MS 15, 225. This is a text of 26 4-line verses, described as 'A Song Mad (i.e. 'made') by F:B:P.'. The initials may have referred to a Roman Catholic priest (the 'P' standing for 'Pater') persecuted and perhaps imprisoned during the reign of Elizabeth I. For various theories, see 'F.B.P.'*.
A poem entitled 'Hymn on the New Jerusalem', by 'W. P.',...
ADAMS, Jessie. b. Ipswich, Suffolk, 9 September 1863; d. York, 15 July 1954. She was educated at Ipswich and at York (her family moved to York in 1878). She continued to live with her parents in various parts of London (Tottenham, Twickenham, Forest Gate) from 1889 until 1900, when they moved back to East Anglia. She returned to York in her final years.
Adams was a member of the Society of Friends; she was very interested in the Adult School Movement (the National Adult School Organisation...
See 'Kneels at the feet of his friends'*
Jesus, Lord, Redeemer. Patrick Miller Kirkland* (1857-1943).
This moving Easter hymn was first published in the English Presbyterian hymnbook, Church Praise (revised edition, 1907). It is unusual in hymnody because it includes the story of the road to Emmaus and the ten disciples (without Judas and Thomas) in hiding on the first Easter day:
Faithful ones, communing, Towards the close of day, Desolate and weary, Met Thee in the way...
In the upper chamber, Where the ten, in fear,...
Jesus calls us! O'er the tumult. Cecil Frances Alexander* (1818-1895).
Written for St Andrew's Day (30 November) and included in a book published by the SPCK, Hymns for Public Worship (1852), edited by Thomas Vincent Fosbery*. It was published with an inferior and amended text in its successor, the SPCK Church Hymns (1871) and in the Second Edition of A&M (1875). EH returned to Alexander's version, and many 20th-century books followed, although successive editions of A&M have stuck to...
Jesus, my Saviour, full of grace. Benjamin Ingham* (1712-1772).
This hymn appeared in the Inghamite hymnal, A Collection of Hymns for the Use of Those that seek, and Those that have Redemption in the Blood of Christ (Kendal, 1757), known as the 'Kendal Hymn Book'. It had six stanzas:
Jesus, the Saviour of my soul, Be Thou my heart's delight;Remain the same to me always, My joy by day and night.
Hungry and thirsty after Thee, May I be found each hour; Humble in heart, and happy kept By...
Jesus, we love to meet. Elizabeth Parson* (1812-1873)
This hymn exists in several forms. It was written in the 'Thou' and 'Thee' form: 'Jesus, we love to meet/ On this, Thy holy day'. It has been modernized in some books to the 'you' form, 'On this, your holy day', as in the Psalter Hymnal (1987). It had three stanzas, and appeared in many books in the USA.
A version is found in Methodist US hymnals (MH66, UMH). This is by the Nigerian musician and writer Olajida Olude*, translated by Biodun...
STEVENSON, (Sir) John Andrew. b. Dublin, 1761; d. Kells, County Meath, 14 September 1833. Born in Crane Lane off Dame Street, Dublin, he was an indentured choirboy at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, in 1775, receiving tutorage under Richard Woodward junior and Samuel Murphy. He was appointed stipendiary at St Patrick's Cathedral on 20 July 1775 by Dean Cradock and at Christ Church Cathedral in 1781; then vicar choral at St Patrick's Cathedral in 1783 and at Christ Church Cathedral in 1800. He...
STOREY, John Andrew. b. Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, 24 March 1935; d. Yeovil, Somerset, 5 December 1997. He was born into a Congregationalist family. Instead of two years of National Service, he engaged for three years in order to become a medical orderly in the Royal Air Force. He then trained for the Congregational ministry at the Western College, Bristol (1956-61), where he became interested in the study of comparative religion.
Storey became minister of a group of Congregational churches...
ANTES, John (Johann). b. Frederick, Pennsylvania, 24 March 1740; d. Bristol, England, 17 December 1811. Born near the Moravian Church community of Bethlehem, Antes was educated at the Moravian Boys' School in Bethlehem, where his talent in music was encouraged. During the early 1760s, he established an instrument-making atelier in Bethlehem where he crafted violins, violas, and violoncellos (he is known to have made at least seven instruments, of which two are still extant). Feeling the call of...
BOWRING, (Sir) John. b. Exeter, Devon, 17 October 1792; d. Exeter, 23 November 1872. He was educated at school in Exeter at an evening school run by the Unitarian divine, Dr Lant Carpenter. On leaving school he entered a business engaged in foreign trade, where he met many travellers and laid the foundations of his truly extraordinary linguistic acquisition, learning French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Dutch. He later became proficient in Swedish, Russian, Danish, Serbian, Polish...
CENNICK, John. b. Reading, Berkshire, 12 December 1718; d. London, 4 July 1755. On one side of the family his grandparents had been Quakers, persecuted for their beliefs, but his parents were members of the Church of England. He was educated at Reading, and brought up strictly, 'kept constant to daily Prayers'. As a young man he subsequently went through a period of depression. He was trained as a shoemaker.
He had an experience of salvation in 7 September 1737, and sought out the Methodists in...
DAY, John. b. Dunwich, Suffolk, 1522; d. 23 July 1584. Day became an important London printer, and one of very few who printed music. In 1559 he was fined for printing an unauthorized edition of the psalms, but produced a further edition of 83 psalms in 1561 (JJ, pp. 858-9). He produced a collection of liturgical music, Certaine Notes (publication begun in 1560, completed in 1565). But his career was built on a monopoly, granted by Queen Elizabeth I in 1559, in the common psalm book, Sternhold*...
DOWLAND, John. b. 1563; d. London, between 20 January and 20 February 1626. Nothing is known about the first 17 years of Dowland's life, but it is thought that he underwent his musical apprenticeship in the service of courtiers such as Sir Henry Cobham (with whom he spent some four years in Paris), George Carey, and Henry Noel. In 1588 he was admitted to the degree of B.Mus at Oxford. In the same year John Case, in his Apologia musices, listed him among the most celebrated musicians of the day....
GOWANS, John. b. Blantyre, Lanarkshire, 13 November 1934; d. South London, 8 December 2012. Gowans became a Salvation Army officer in 1955, after National Service in the Royal Army Educational Corps. At school he developed an interest in poetry and drama, and in 1966 was co-opted to write the lyrics for a Salvation Army youth musical, with the composer John Larsson. Alongside his appointments in Britain, France and USA, he went on to write ten musicals on Biblical and Salvation Army themes,...
HARPER, John. b. 1947. John Harper was a chorister, King's College, Cambridge (1956-61), and a music scholar, Clifton College, Bristol (1961-66). He returned to Cambridge as organ scholar, Selwyn College (1966-70), followed by four years as a research student, University of Birmingham (1970-74). He was appointed as a lecturer in music, University of Birmingham (1974-75, 1976-81), and then at the University of Oxford (1981-90), where he was Fellow, Tutor in music, organist and informator...
HOPKINS, John. b. Wednesbury, Staffordshire, 1520/1521; d. Great Waldingfield, Suffolk, October 1570 (buried 23 October). Nothing is known of his early life. He was probably the John Hopkins who was admitted to a BA degree at Oxford in 1544, and who was ordained a few years later (deacon 1551, priest 1552). In 1551 his age was given as 30, which is the only evidence of his birth date. He worked in London for a time, and there is a reference to him in Edward Hake's A Compendious Fourme of...
CUMMINS, John James. b. Cork, Ireland, 5 May 1795; d. London, 23 November 1867. An Irishman, he lived in London from 1834 onwards. He was a Director of the Union Bank of Australia. He was also a student of Hebrew and Theology. He published Seals of the Covenant Opened or the Sacraments of the Church considered in their Connexion with the Great Doctrines of the Gospel (1839), a prose work for his family 'to remind them of their solemn responsibilities, as members of the Church of Christ; and...
JULIAN, John. b. Mithian, near St Agnes, Cornwall, 27 January 1839; d. Topcliffe, Yorkshire, 22 January 1913. The Methodist archives in the John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester, searched by John Lenton, inform us that John Julian was the son of Thomas and Ann Julian, and christened at St Agnes (2 March 1839). He was brought up as a Wesleyan Methodist, and became a Probationer minister, a 'Preacher on Trial' in the Leeds Third Circuit (1861), the Kington Circuit (stationed...
MARCKANT, John. d. Clacton, Essex, ca. 1586. Little is known of Marckant's life. He was made vicar of Great Clacton in 1559, which suggests that he may have been one of the newly-returned Protestant exiles. He remained at Clacton until his death, also holding the living of Shopland, Essex, between 1563 and 1568. He is believed to be the author of four psalm versions in the Old Version*, The Whole Booke of Psalmes of 1562. These have the initial 'M' attached, and in an edition of 1565 the full...
MURRAY, John. b. Alton, Hampshire, England, ca. 1740; d. Boston, Massachusetts, 3 September 1815. Murray is regarded as the founder of the Universalist denomination in America (see Unitarian-Universalist hymnody, USA*). He contributed five hymn texts to James Relly* and John Relly's Christian Hymns, Poems, and Sacred Songs: Sacred to the Praise of God Our Saviour (Portsmouth, Massachusetts, 1782). His wife, Judith Murray*, became an important American literary figure and Universalist...
HOPPS, John Page. b. London, 6 November 1834; d. Shepperton, Middlesex, 6 April 1911. He was educated at Leicester General Baptist College, where he trained for the Baptist ministry. After serving as minister at Hugglescote and Ibstock (1856) and at Birmingham (1857-), he became a Unitarian in 1860 and went on to serve as a Unitarian minister in Sheffield, Dukinfield, Glasgow, Leicester and London. Hopps published many books, pamphlets and sermons, many of which proved controversial: he...
PECHAM, John (Johannes de Pescham, Peccanus, Pischano, Pisano, Pithyano). b. Patcham, Sussex, ca. 1230; d. Mortlake, Surrey, 8 December 1292. After receiving his early education at the Cluniac Priory at Lewes, John Pecham joined the Order of Friars Minor in Oxford ca. 1250. Pecham studied the liberal arts at Oxford and then, some time between 1257 and 1259, travelled to Paris, where he completed his studies in theology. He served as Franciscan lector and regent master of theology there from...
POLLOCK, John. b. Glasgow, Scotland, 27 October 1852; d. Belfast, Northern Ireland, 4 January 1935. The son of Janet, née Riddell, and Alexander Pollock, a grocer and tea merchant, John was baptized into the Free Church of Scotland, where his father was an Elder of the Kirk. His lively grasp of ideas and propensity for instructing others were in evidence at an early stage: he became a Sunday School teacher at the age of twelve.
At first attracted to a career in business, he entered the Arts...
PULLAIN (or PULLEYNE), John. b. Yorkshire (?), ca 1517; d. Colchester (?), before 16 July 1565. Thought to have been born in Yorkshire, he was educated at Oxford, College unknown (BA 1540, MA 1544). He was ordained (deacon 1550, priest 1551) and appointed rector of the important London church, St Peter, Cornhill (1553). He was expelled from the living in 1554, following the accession of Mary Tudor, but continued to minister to Protestants in London and Colchester before being forced into exile...
BEARD, John Relly. b. Portsmouth, 4 August 1800; d. Ashton upon Mersey, 22 November 1876. He was educated at Portsmouth and in France (paid for by a member of the Portsmouth Unitarian chapel). He entered Manchester College (then at York) in 1820, and became a Unitarian minister at Salford, Manchester, then with the same congregation at Strangeways, Manchester (1825-64). He also ran a school to augment his income, and was enthusiastically engaged in promoting education for all. He was a...
WREFORD, John Reynell. b. Barnstaple, Devon, 12 December 1800; d. London, 2 July 1881. He was educated for the Unitarian ministry at Manchester College (then at York). He was appointed co-pastor of the New Meeting, Birmingham, in 1826, but was forced to leave his post in 1831 because of trouble with his voice. In conjunction with another Unitarian minister from Birmingham, Hugh Hutton, he then opened a school at Edgbaston, Birmingham. He retired to Bristol and died in London.
Wreford published...
MONSELL, John Samuel Bewley. b. Londonderry, Ireland 2 March 1811; d. Guildford, 9 April 1875. He was the son of an archdeacon of Derry, and brother of the politician William Monsell, first Baron Emly (1812-94). He entered Trinity College, Dublin (BA 1832). He was ordained (deacon 1834, priest 1835), and was successively chaplain to Bishop Richard Mant*; Chancellor of the diocese of Connor; rector of Ramoan, Co. Antrim; vicar of Egham, Surrey (1853-70); and rector of St Nicolas, Guildford...
SWERTNER, John. b. Haarlem, the Netherlands, 1746; d. Bristol, 11 March 1813. As a young man he came to England, where he married Elizabeth, the daughter of John Cennick*. He was the minister of the Moravian church at Dublin, and for ten years minister of the Fairfield Moravian Settlement, Droylsden, Manchester (1790-1800).
He was the editor of the British Moravian hymnbook, A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the Protestant Church of the United Brethren (1789) and of its enlarged edition,...
WEDDERBURN, John. b. Dundee, Scotland, ca. 1505; d. England, place unknown, 1556. John Wedderburn was the second of four sons of a Dundee merchant, younger brother of James* and older brother of Robert, later vicar of Dundee from 1546 to ca 1555-60, and Henry. John was educated at St Andrews University (BA 1526, MA 1528), becoming a priest of St Matthew's Chapel, Dundee. His reforming views caused him to be indicted for heresy, and he fled to Germany, probably in 1539. He took refuge in...
ADAM, Joseph. b. perhaps Dundee, ca. 1843, date unknown; d. Bournville, Birmingham, 10 March 1919. According to the Churches of Christ periodical, The Bible Advocate ('Pleading for a Complete Return to the Faith and Practice of the New Testament Church'), 4 April 1919, he was born 'some seventy-six years ago in the city of Dundee'. Adam was trained as a carpenter, but became a Churches of Christ evangelist, trained at Birmingham by the great Churches of Christ evangelist David King (1819-1894)....
See 'To my humble supplication'*
COOK, Joseph Simpson. b. County Durham, England, 4 December 1859; d. Toronto, Ontario, 27 May 1933. He emigrated to Georgetown, Ontario, entering the Methodist ministry as a probationer with London Conference in 1880, serving Bayfield Mission on the eastern shore of Lake Huron from 1881 until 1883. He enrolled in a combined course in Arts and Theology at McGill University and Wesleyan Theological College, being ordained in 1885. He earned an MA from Illinois Wesleyan University (1892), a BD...
Jubilate Hymns
The British Jubilate Group was founded in November 1980 as a limited liability company with the title Jubilate Hymns Ltd. It still retains its legal title but is now commonly known as the Jubilate Group.
Prior to their adoption of the Jubilate name, a team, chiefly of young Anglican clergy led by Michael Baughen*, later Bishop of Chester, began in the early 1960s to write hymn texts and tunes, initially for the church youth groups for whom they had pastoral responsibility. They...
O'NEILL, Judith Beatrice (née Lyall). b. Melbourne, Australia, 3 June 1930. She was educated at Mildura High School (the family moved to Mildura, in the north of the State of Victoria, in 1940) and the University of Melbourne. She studied in London (1952-53), and taught English Literature at the University of Melbourne (1954-55, and again in 1959-64; from 1955 to 1959 she was in Göttingen and Cambridge, with her postgraduate student husband, whom she married in 1954). In 1964 she returned to...
JULIAN of Norwich. b. 1342; d. ca. 1416. Her anchorite cell was at the Parish Church of St Julian, Conisford, Norwich, and this may be the origin of her name. Little is known for certain about her life, although she became an anchoress before 1394.
She wrote The Revelations of Divine Love, reflections on sixteen visions of Christ crucified which she received in May 1373. A short version was written at some point in the years following the vision; the longer version (on which her reputation...
GETTY, (Julian) Keith. b. 16 December 1974. Getty is a Northern Irish hymn-writer, composer and performer. His work is often collaborative, working together with his wife, Kristyn Getty* and Stuart Townend*. In partnership with Townend, he has been responsible for some of the most popular hymns of the early 21st century, most famously 'In Christ alone my hope is found'* (2001). This hymn has become one of the best known of all 21st-century hymns; it has frequently featured at or near the top of...
The Keswick Convention and its hymns
The Keswick Convention, a non-denominational and evangelical annual meeting, was founded in 1875 by an Anglican, Canon T.D. Harford-Battersby, Vicar of St John's, Keswick, in collaboration with a Cumberland Quaker, Robert Wilson. It was a product of the 'Holiness movement' of the period (see 'Holiness hymnody, USA*), inspired in part by a book by William Edwin Boardman (1810-1886) called The Higher Christian Life (1859). After a series of revival meetings,...
Kneels at the feet of his friends. Tom Colvin* (1925-2000).
Often known by the first line of its refrain, 'Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love', this song was written in Ghana during Colvin's period of missionary service, 1959-64, and set to an indigenous love-song melody collected at Chereponi in northern Ghana. The text, based on John 13: 12-16, had its birth during a lay training course for evangelists, where the curriculum also included agricultural and community development, reflecting the...
GETTY, Kristyn (née Lennox). b. 22 May 1980. She is a Northern Irish singer and hymn-writer. Best known for her work in collaboration with her husband Keith Getty*, and Stuart Townend*, she features prominently as a soloist or lead singer on their albums and continues to perform with her husband as part of an Irish-American folk band. She and her husband are frequently cited as co-authors and their work features strong Celtic influences, both in words and music. Their series New Irish Hymns has...
HOUSMAN, Laurence. b. Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, 18 July 1865; d. Glastonbury, Somerset, 20 February 1959. He was the son of a solicitor, and the younger brother of the poet and scholar A.E. Housman (1859-1936). He was educated at home and at Bromsgrove School, before training in London as a graphic artist. He worked as a book illustrator, and was art critic of The Manchester Guardian for 16 years from 1895. He wrote poems, novels, and plays, and journal articles on topics such as feminism,...
'Lining out' was the practice of having the minister or clerk sing a line of a psalm, which was then repeated by the congregation. It was a natural consequence of the seriousness attached to public worship by the Puritan element of the Church of England, which not only followed the precepts of Jean Calvin* in preferring psalms over hymns in divine service, but also tried to insist that the people sang them, line by line, and understood what they were singing. Following the execution of...
The London Hospitals and their hymns
The mid-18th century saw a remarkable burst of new London hospitals (in the wider sense of charitable homes), some of which played an important part in the development of hymnody.
The reasons for the rapid rise of philanthropy are various. Greater sexual promiscuity resulting from early industrialization, urbanization, and the decline of the Puritan ethic had led to soaring numbers of births outside marriage, and to increases in prostitution and venereal...
Long ago the lilies faded. William George Tarrant* (1853-1928).
Tarrant was one of the editors of the Essex Hall Hymnal (1890), a book for the use of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, and named after Essex Hall in London, the headquarters of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association. None of his hymns was found in that book, but in the Revised Edition of 1902 this hymn, with its beautiful first line, was included. It was entitled 'The Constant Presence'. It was loosely based on the...
Longing for light, we wait in darkness ('Christ, be our light'). Bernadette Farrell* (1957- ).
This hymn is frequently known as 'Christ, be our light', from the first line of the refrain. It was published in 1993 by the Oregon Catholic Press (OCP) in Portland, Oregon. Since its first publication, with Farrell's own tune, it has become widely known and much loved in many countries. It has appeared in subsequent OCP books, including Journeysongs (2003), Glory and Praise (2015) and One in Faith...
Lord of our highest love. Gilbert Young Tickle* (1819-1888).
The earliest printing of this hymn recorded in Hymnary.org. is in The Christian Hymnal (Cincinnati, 1882), published for the Churches of Christ. It was published in the same year in New Christian Hymn and Tune Book (Cincinnati: Fillmore Brothers). In Britain it was almost certainly among the 34 hymns by Tickle in A Collection of Hymns for Churches of Christ (Birmingham, 1888), edited by David King (1819-1894), with Tickle as an...
Lord, her watch Thy church is keeping. Henry Downton* (1818-1885).
This stirring hymn for mission was written in 1866 during Downton's time in Geneva, and sung at the annual meeting of the Church Missionary Society in that year. It was published in the Seventh Edition of D.T. Barry's Psalms and Hymns for the Church, School, and Home (1867) and subsequently in Downton's Hymns and Verses, Original and Translated (1873). Too late for the First Edition of A&M, and missed by the 1868 Appendix,...
Lord, whose Love through humble service. Albert Bayly* (1901-1984).
Bayly composed this four-stanza hymn in response to an invitation for hymns on social concerns extended by the Hymn Society of America (HSUSC) and the Department of Social Welfare of the National Council of Churches in Christ in the United States. It was published, set to HYFRYDOL, in the society's Seven New Social Welfare Hymns (19610, described in the Preface as hymns to express 'the interrelationship of worship and service...
Lully, lulla, thou little tiny child ('Coventry Carol'). The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors, 1534, 1591.
This carol is from the mystery play entitled The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors [Taylors], is known as the 'Coventry Carol' because it was first performed in Coventry, England. It was the property of the two guilds, the Shearmen and the Tailors, and is known as a 'mystery play' because each craft jealously preserved the secrets, or mysteries, of its trade. The original incipit is...
COCKBURN-CAMPBELL, Margaret (née Malcolm). b. 1808; d. Alphington, near Exeter, Devonshire, 6 February 1841. She was the daughter of a General, Sir John Malcolm, GCB, who was a friend of the Duke of Wellington. She married her cousin, Sir Alexander Thomas Cockburn-Campbell, in 1827. He was one of the founders of the Plymouth Brethren, and he and his wife must have been closely associated with them in their early years during her short life-time. One year after her death, some of her hymns were...
SMITH, Martin. b. Stoke On Trent, Staffordshire, England, 6 July 1970. He was raised in the north-east London suburb of Woodford Bridge where he grew up attending a small Brethren church. As a teenager, Smith moved to South London, where he first started playing guitar for a Brethren youth group directed by his father. In his autobiography, Smith specifically mentioned the transition from the Hymns of Faith hymnal to the praise choruses in Kingsway's Songs of Fellowship as an important turning...
HAMILTON, Mary C. D. (née Stobart). b. Edinburgh 1850; d. Worthing, Sussex, 10 June 1943. The daughter of John Hamilton and Kathryn Barbara Stobart, Mary was born into a family whose ancestral home was Sundrum Castle in South Ayrshire, Scotland. By 1889, she had moved to Rustington in Sussex, where she lived until the second decade of the 20th century. By 1939 she was living in Worthing, where she died in 1943.
Hamilton gained fame for one hymn text, which earned popularity during World...
PETERS, Mary (née Bowly). b. Cirencester, 17 April 1813; d. Clifton, Bristol, 29 July 1856. Mary Bowly became governess to the children of the Revd John William Peters (1791-1861), rector of Quenington (1823-34) and perpetual curate of Ampney St Mary (1824-32) (both in Gloucestershire), and vicar of Langford (on the Berkshire-Oxfordshire border) (1825-34). Peters resigned the Ampney living in 1832 in order to serve the other two parishes more adequately, and in 1834 he resigned the others on...
SHEKLETON, Mary. b., place and date unknown, 1827; d. Dublin, 28 September 1883. She was born in England, but the place and exact date are unknown. After the death of her father when she was six months old, her mother returned to her family home in Ireland with her children. Shekleton was deeply influenced by her mother, who had experienced an evangelical conversion on the death of her husband, and who brought up her four daughters in a prayerful, scripture-centred household where an emphasis...
REDMAN, Matt. b. Watford, Hertfordshire, 14 February, 1974. He was raised in Chorleywood, attending St Andrew's Church, and being educated at Watford Grammar School until 1992.
He has been a full-time worship leader since the age of 20, helping to set up the 'Soul Survivor' movement in Watford, and developing an enthusiasm for Christian song-writing that reaches people normally outside the more established church circles. He has travelled internationally, settling twice in America (California...
British Methodist Hymnody
During the time of John Wesley
John Wesley* and Charles Wesley* sang hymns in the Holy Club which Charles had founded at Oxford in 1729, of which John became the acknowledged leader on his return there later in the same year. They would have used traditional English psalm tunes (see Leaver, 1996, p. 31). However, their interest in the potential of hymns as important aids to worship and spirituality developed strongly on the ship that took them to America in 1735-36....
COVERDALE, Miles. b. York, 1488; d. London, 20 January 1569. Although it is known that he was born at York, the rest of Coverdale's early years are unrecorded. He was ordained in 1514, becoming an Augustinian friar at Cambridge, where he was a leading member of a group of theologians meeting to discuss the works of Martin Luther* (Leaver, 1991, p. 62). By 1528 he had left the Augustinians, and become an itinerant preacher. He lived in various parts of the continent for some years, working on...
Missions and mission hymnody, Britain and Ireland
The idea of 'Mission' is as old as the church itself. One of the last commands of our Lord was to the disciples: 'Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature' (Mark 16: 15), and the events of the first Pentecost (Acts 2) were those of inspiration followed by preaching and healing. Since that time, it has always been a priority of the church to spread the gospel to places where it has not been heard. St Patrick became the...
Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day. Edmund Spenser* (ca. 1552-1599).
Spenser's Amoretti, published in the same volume as Epithalamion in 1595, are love sonnets, probably written to Elizabeth Boyle, whom he married in 1594. The sonnet sequence was a common literary form of the period. Sonnet 68 is unusual in the sequence in using the Easter story as a reason for loving one another; but its rare beauty makes it a valuable addition to devotional poetry, and it has been included in a...
The origins of the Muggletonians are to be found in the ferment of religious and political ideas that followed the breakdown of established authority at the start of the English Civil War. The two London tailors who founded the sect, John Reeve (1608-1658) and his cousin Lodowick Muggleton (1609-1698), were both from a Puritan background and were for a time attracted to the Ranters, whom they subsequently denounced. It was Reeve who, on 3, 4 and 5 February 1651 received a series of visions,...
My God, all nature owns Thy sway. Helen Maria Williams* (1759-1827). This is one of four 'Paraphrases from Scripture' from Williams's Poems (1786). This one is on Psalm 74: 16, 17. It was described in JJ as being 'in C.U.' ('Common Use'), and as found in Hymns for the Christian Church and Home (1840), compiled by James Martineau*. It is no longer used in Britain, and its time in the USA seems to be over also:
PSALM lxxiv. 16, 17.
My God! all nature owns Thy sway,Thou giv'st the night, and...
My God, since I can call thee mine. John Murray* (ca. 1740-1815).
This is the fourth of five hymns, published in the 1782 edition of Christian Hymns, Poems and Sacred Songs, Sacred to the Praise of God, Our Saviour, compiled by English Universalist James Relly* and his brother John Relly. The book was first published in London in 1754, and the 1782 edition was published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for Noah Parker (1734-1787), a convert of Murray's and preacher in Portsmouth (Brewster, pp....
New College, Edinburgh, Hymnology Collection
New College was founded to serve the Free Church of Scotland at the Disruption of 1843, when ministers, led by David Welsh and Thomas Chalmers but including such figures as Horatius Bonar*, left the Church of Scotland on the grounds that the church was becoming too closely identified with the state, and subject to the right of patronage (see 'Synod of Relief hymns'*). The buildings of New College, prominent on the Mound on the Edinburgh skyline, were...
TEMPERLEY, Nicholas. b. Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, 7 August 1932; d. Urbana, Illinois, 8 April 2020. He was the son of Major General Arthur Cecil Temperley (1877–1940), sometime military attaché at the League of Nations and author of The Whispering Gallery of Europe (1938). He was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge. He first came to the University of Illinois in 1959 as a postdoctoral fellow. He then taught in the music departments of Cambridge and Yale, and joined the...
MacNICOL, Nicol. b. Catacol, Lochranza, Isle of Arran, 26 February 1870; d. Edinburgh, 13 February 1952. His father was minister of the United Free Church at Lochranza, later moving to Dunoon. Nicol MacNicol was educated at Glasgow High School and the University of Glasgow. He then studied at the United Free Church Theological College in Glasgow, before being ordained as a missionary to India in 1895. He spent six years at Wilson College, Bombay, before moving to the United Free Church Mission...
Night has fallen. Malawian, translated by Tom Colvin* (1925-2000).
The original was written by a Scottish missionary, probably Clement Scott, about 1885, to a melody collected by him from boatmen on the Zambezi river, and which had become established as a Malawi evening hymn. Colvin made the translation while himself serving in Malawi. The melody is believed to be the remnant of a song about the Virgin Mary introduced by Jesuits some two or three centuries earlier. In performance, the hymn is...
This is the traditional pattern in Britain and elsewhere for a Carol Service. The basic template was laid down at King's College, Cambridge, beginning in 1918. The Dean of King's, Eric Milner-White, had been a chaplain in the army during World War I, which had ended a month earlier, and was seeking for a Christmas service that would appeal to many people.
He based the service on one devised at Truro by Edward White Benson*, ca. 1880, which was the true beginning of the tradition. It was...
RICHARDS, Noel. b. 1955. Richards is a Welsh singer-songwriter, guitarist and worship leader. His songs belong to the modern evangelical tradition and are characterised by direct language and strong rhythmic profiles. Among his best known songs are 'All heaven declares' and 'You laid aside your majesty.' The former, first published in 1987, has gained widespread popularity, and still features prominently in lists of most-used hymns and songs (http://www.ccli.co.uk/resources/top25.cfm, accessed...
Now Israel. William Whittingham* (ca. 1525/1530- 1579).
This is one of the two metrical versions of Psalm 124 of 1551: the other begins 'Had not the Lord been on our side'. According to Millar Patrick*, the metrical version of 'Now Israel' in French and the tune are by Théodore de Bèze*, in Pseaumes octante trois de David, mise en rime francoise. A savoir quarante neuf par Clement Marot. et trente quatre par Theodore de Besze (Geneva, 1551). The first stanza of this, the better known version...
O God, Thou art the Father. Attributed to St Columba* (521-597), translated by Duncan MacGregor* (1854-1923).
This is a translation of the hymn beginning 'In Te, Christe, credentium miserearis omnium'. Both sections were traditionally attributed to St Columba, but a note in the Trinity College MS casts doubt on his authorship of the first part. For details of the MS, the translation, its original, and its first publication, see the entry on 'Christ is the world's Redeemer'*. This translates...
O that mine eyes would closed be. Thomas Ellwood* (1639-1713).
This hymn is taken from The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood. Or, an Account of his Birth, Education, &c… Written by his own hand. To which is added a Supplement by J. W. (1714). Published after Ellwood's death, his autobiography was supplemented by Joseph Wyeth (J.W.) in which this poem is quoted on page 462:
O that mine Eye might closed be To what becomes me not to see! The Deafness might possess mine Ear, To what...
O the deep, deep love of Jesus. Samuel Trevor Francis* (1834-1925).
Written before 1898, when it was published in Francis's Whence-Whither, and Other Poems. It had eight stanzas (accessible at https://www.hymnologyarchive.com/o-the-deep-deep-love-of-jesus). It was shortened to three stanzas in Hymns of Consecration and Faith 2 (1902), and in The Song Companion to the Scriptures (1911), and this has become the customary version in hymnals (the full hymn is in the posthumously-published...
O thou by long experience tried. Jeanne Marie Guyon* (1648-1717), translated by William Cowper* (1731-1800).
Madame Guyon's spiritual songs, entitled Poésies et Cantiques Spirituels (1722), were published after her death in 1717. Cowper translated 37 of them into English in 1782. His attention was drawn to them by his friend William Bull, the evangelical rector of Newport Pagnell. Bull published them after Cowper's death, as Poems Translated from the French of Madame de la Mothe Guion (1801)....
BECKERLEGGE, Oliver Aveyard. b. Sheffield, Yorkshire, 1 October 1913; d. Chesterfield, Derbyshire, 18 February 2003. He was educated at Sheffield University, where he read Modern Languages, and was awarded a PhD for an edition of an early medieval text in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Le Secré de secrez by Pierre d'Abernun of Fetcham (published in Oxford by Basil Blackwell for the Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1944). After leaving university, he taught at Düsseldorf in Germany, returning to England...
On Christmas night. English Traditional, ascribed to Luke Wadding (1628–1691).
Paul Westermeyer* notes that this is a '“Wexford carol” (though not the carol most often called the “The Wexford Carol”' (Westermeyer, 2010, p. 50). The text and the tune of this favorite carol have distinct backgrounds, though the exact origins of each are unclear. The first printed version of an earlier form of the text appears with the ascription, 'Another short Carroll for Christmas day' in A Smale Garland of...
Once in royal David's city. Cecil Frances Alexander* (1818-1895).
First published in Hymns for Little Children (1848) in six stanzas. Alexander wrote hymns for the articles of the Apostles' Creed: this one is on 'was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary'. It was printed in the Appendix (1868) to the First Edition of A&M, together with the tune by Henry John Gauntlett* entitled IRBY; since that time it has featured in the Christmas section of almost every hymn book. It has...
One who is all unfit to count. Narayan Vaman Tilak* (1861-1919), translated by Nicol MacNicol* (1870-1952).
Written in Marathi, and translated by MacNicol, who published it in a periodical, The Indian Interpreter, in 1919. It was subsequently published in J.C. Winslow, Narayan Vaman Tilak, the Christian Poet of Maharashtra (Calcutta, 1923). It was included in A Missionary Hymn Book (1922) and then in RCH, in both books to the tune WIGTOWN (or WIGTON) from the Scottish Psalter of 1635. It has...
Attitudes towards the use of organs to accompany the congregational singing of hymns and metrical psalms varied dramatically across the centuries and from place to place. Religious zealots denounced them as vainglorious ornaments, whilst musical reformers advocated their use to impose order on undisciplined singing. This makes an account of the subject problematic since almost any statement can be contradicted. It is important to realise that whereas organs were habitually to be found in the...
Social Hymns
Robert Owen, the great philanthropist, took over the mills at New Lanark in 1800, and turned them into an institution that combined profitability and humane working practices. Published in what is often referred to as the 'sectarian' phase of the Owenite socialist movement, Social Hymns for the Use of Friends of the Rational System Society is a collection of ideological songs for The Association of All Classes of All Nations. The Association, which was established by Robert Owen in...
This is the name given to a movement within the Church of England which endeavoured to resist government interference in the church affairs and reaffirm the authority of the church as a holy and divinely authenticated institution. Its origins were political as well as religious (Nockles, 1994). The early adherents of the movement were concerned at the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832; at the appointment of bishops and Regius Professors of Theology by the government; at what they saw as a...
Praise ye Jehovah! Praise the Lord most holy. Margaret Cockburn-Campbell* (1808-1841).
Lady Campbell was a member of the Brethren, and this hymn, with others by her, was first published a year after her early death in James George Deck*'s Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1842, enlarged 1847). It had four stanzas:
Praise ye Jehovah! Praise the Lord most holy, Who cheers the contrite, girds with strength the weak; Praise him who will with glory crown the lowly, And with salvation beautify...
Presbyterian Church of England Hymnody
History
Presbyterianism traces its origins back to the Reformation, when one element in the Protestant tradition was the dislike of human authority in religious matters, and the preference for government by 'presbyters' (from the Greek 'presbuteros', or 'elder') rather than bishops or priests. In Scotland the Reformation was guided by the powerful John Knox (1505-1572), who had studied under Jean Calvin* in Geneva; in both Scotland and England...
British Public School hymnody.
'What is a college without a chapel?' Bishop Christopher Wordsworth* asked a canon of Winchester Cathedral. 'An angel without wings' was the reply. This incident neatly expresses the central importance of daily worship in the life of a Victorian educational institution in Britain. Wordsworth was referring to a teacher training college, but his remark applied equally to a public school. It was these leading boys' schools that educated many of the professional men...
Refreshed by gentle slumbers. JJohann Kaspar Lavater* (1741-1801), translated by Henrietta Joan Fry* (1799-1860).
We have not been able to discover the publication details of this hymn (the Editors would welcome any information). Although Henrietta Fry translated many hymns by Lavater, this one was not found in The Pastor's Legacy; or Devotional Fragments from the German of Lavater (Bristol and London, 1842: thanks to Lucy Saint-Smith, Society of Friends Library, London, for this...
GRANT, (Sir) Robert. b. Kidderpore, Bengal, India, 15 January 1780; d. Dapoorie, Western India, 9 July 1838. He was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge (BA, 1801, MA, 1804). He became a Fellow of Magdalene College, was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn (1807), and became King's Serjeant in the Court of the Duchy of Lancaster. He became a Member of Parliament in 1818 and a Privy Councillor in 1831, promoting a bill in 1833 for the emancipation of the Jews, which passed the Commons but was...
STEWART, Robert Prescott. b. Dublin, 16 December 1825; d. Dublin, 24 March 1894. Born at Pitt Street (now Balfe Street), Dublin, Stewart joined the choir school at Christ Church Cathedral in 1833. His musical career commenced in 1844 when at the age of 19 he succeeded John Robinson as organist at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, and at the Chapel of Trinity College. Two years later, after the resignation of Joseph Robinson, Stewart assumed the conductorship of the University of Dublin Choral...
SMITH, Rodney ('Gipsy' Smith). b. Epping Forest, near London, 31 March 1860; d. at sea 4 August 1947). He was born in a Romany tent, the fourth of six children of Cornelius Smith (1831-1922) and Mary Welch (ca. 1831-1865). His family made a living selling baskets, clothes pegs, tinware, and through horse-dealing; neither of his parents could read. He grew up 'as wild as the birds, frolicsome as the lambs, and as difficult to catch as the rabbits' (Smith, 1901, Chapter 1). His mother died of...
Before the Second Vatican Council
English Catholic hymnody falls into two distinct phases: the era between the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 and the Second Vatican Council (1962-3) and the years between that time and the present day. In the first period Catholic hymnody had a distinctly different character from its Protestant counterparts, partly because of the history of the English Catholic community; but also because it served very different functions.
Between 1559 and the First...
THOMAS, Ruth ('Ruthie'). b. in England of African Caribbean parents, 7 July 1956. She grew up in Wales. She was a student at King Alfred's University College, Winchester, where she received a P.D. James Bursary and was awarded an MA in the School of English in Writing for Children. She has subsequently published two novels for children, Ruby Tucker (2008) and Different (2010). She is a gospel singer, performer, poet, and hymn writer whose work has appeared in a number of contemporary...
Salisbury hymns and hymnals
The Use of Salisbury or Sarum was the most influential and widespread secular liturgy in the British Isles in the later Middle Ages. (For a detailed overview of its history and influence see Sandon, 2001, pp. 159-60.) The origins and early development of the Use are obscure: the earliest surviving service book dates from the end of the 12th century. In the early 13th century the town of Old Sarum was moved to a new site two miles away, which became known as New Sarum...
Salvation! O the joyful sound. Isaac Watts* (1674-1748) and Walter Shirley* (1725-1786).
This began as 'LXXXVIII. Salvation' in Book II, 'Compos'd on Divine Subjects', of Isaac Watts's Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707). It had three stanzas:
Salvation! O the joyful Sound! 'Tis Music to our Ears; A Sovereign Balm for every Wound, A Cordial for our Fears.
Bury'd in Sorrow and in Sin, At Hell's dark Door we lay, But we arise by Grace Divine To see a heavenly Day.
Salvation! let the Eccho...
Salvator mundi Domine. Latin, date and author unknown.
According to James Mearns* in JJ (p. 988), this hymn is found in manuscripts of the 12th and 13th centuries. It is found in the Sarum, York, Hereford and Aberdeen Breviaries, appointed as a hymn for Compline at times that varied from monastery to monastery.
Different versions of this popular hymn are found in Daniel, Thesaurus Hymnologicus IV, p. 209, and in Analecta Hymnica, 23. 39. It was well known in England in Tudor times, because it...
TREGELLES, Samuel Prideaux. b. Falmouth, Cornwall, 30 January 1813; d. Plymouth, Devon, 24 April 1875. Educated at Falmouth Grammar School, he was employed at the Neath Abbey ironworks in Glamorgan, South Wales from 1829 to 1835. During that time he taught himself Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, and also learned Welsh, a language in which he sometimes preached. He was brought up as a Quaker, but joined the Plymouth Brethren. His hymns were published in their Hymns for the Poor of the Flock...
The Sandemanian Church was formed in Scotland, ca. 1730, by John Glas (1695-1773), who was dismissed from his charge as minister of Tealing, near Dundee, and who formed an independent church of his followers, opposed to the authority of anything except Holy Scripture, and believing that the death of Jesus Christ was sufficient to present even the worst sinner spotless before God (this antinomian doctrine was the subject of James Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner,...
The hymns written and sung by Scottish Christians have been generally more rugged, strenuous and theologically nuanced than those of their co-religionists south of the Border, reflecting the harsher nature of their physical landscape, the greater seriousness and intensity of their faith, and the intellectual calibre of their ministry. Scottish hymn writers may not have had the smooth elegance or artistic accomplishment of their English counterparts — JJ ended its entry on them with the...
Medieval Secular Orders in England
The secular, or non-monastic, clergy of the medieval English church fulfilled a variety of roles, ranging from parish priests to the clergy of secular cathedrals and collegiate churches. Of England's nineteen cathedrals, in the later middle ages, ten were served by chapters of monks or regular canons and nine by chapters of secular canons. In addition to the dean and canons of the chapter, secular cathedrals also employed a college of ordained vicars choral to...
Sing God's Glory (2001).
This is the title of a new and enlarged edition of Sing His Glory (1997), sub-titled 'Hymns for Sundays and Holy Days, Years A, B & C', published in Britain by the Canterbury Press, Norwich. The new title recognises the claims of the feminist movement in Britain, and the sub-title is an accurate description of the contents. The Revised Common Lectionary was authorised for use in the Church of England from Advent 1997, and this compilation is described as 'one...
Sound of Living Waters
Sound of Living Waters was published in 1974 in London by Hodder & Stoughton and in the USA by Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1974), edited by Betty Pulkingham* and Jeanne Harper. It had a bright cover, and was ring-bound, making it one of the earliest books to break free from the traditional style and format. Sub-titled Songs of Renewal, it contained 133 items, arranged in sections, as follows:
Hallelujah!... Songs of praise and thanksgiving
Kneel and Adore…...
The first Spring Harvest conference, a week-long Easter-time event, was launched in Prestatyn in 1979. Some 2,700 people attended. This has since become an annual event which has rapidly grown in popularity and influence among evangelical Christians of varied denominational backgrounds (the organisation subscribes to the beliefs of 'The Evangelical Alliance Basis of Faith' and 'The Lausanne Covenant'). In 1986, the event expanded to two locations (Prestatyn and Minehead), and in 1988 the...
This is the name given to a group of Roman Catholic composers, who were associated with a study centre in the parish of St Thomas More, North London, from 1969 onwards. The group's founder members were Stephen Dean*, Paul Inwood*, Bernadette Farrell*, Peter Jones, Ernest Sands*, Bill Tamblyn*, Christopher Walker* and James Walsh, although only Dean and Inwood were on the staff of the centre. Other members include Peter McGrail and Anne Quigley.
In 1985 Paul Inwood and Christopher Walker...
On Guy Fawkes' Day, 5 November 1907, four partners decided to turn their enterprise, which had been trading for a few months, into a limited company, and Stainer & Bell was formed, publishing from a room in Berners Street, London. There was neither a Mr Stainer nor a Mr Bell. Tradition has it that the partners chose the name because it had a creditworthy ring to it. Harry Plunket Greene, the Irish bass singer, headed the company's music selection committee, and the new enterprise received...
HINE, Stuart Keene. b. Hammersmith, London, 25 July 1899; d. Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex, 14 March 1989. Born into a Salvation Army family in London, he was educated at Cooper's Company School. He served in the First World War from 1917 to 1918/1919, after which he and his wife became Plymouth Brethren missionaries, mainly in Eastern Europe between 1923 and 1939, when they were forced to return to Britain by the political situation. During the Second World War they worked with displaced persons....
TOWNEND, Stuart. b. Edinburgh, 1 June 1963. He was educated at Sowerby Bridge High School, near Halifax, West Yorkshire, then at the University of Sussex, Brighton (1981-1985), where he gained an honours degree in American Studies (Literature). Remaining in Brighton, after a year of training in evangelism at the Clarendon Church (now Church of Christ the King), he joined the staff at Kingsway Music, Eastbourne, initially as an in-house arranger and editor, and later as Head of Music, editing...
Swedenborgian hymnody
Swedenborgians are the followers of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), a distinguished Swedish mathematician and scientist, whose life was changed in 1745 by the 'opening of his spiritual sight', after which he taught a series of doctrines drawn from the Word of God coupled with his ability to see heaven and hell and converse with angels and spirits. He rejected the orthodox doctrine of the Atonement, preferring the idea that the end of creation is that human beings can...
Synod of Relief hymns
The 'presbytery of relief' was founded in 1761 by three Scottish ministers, Thomas Gillespie of Dunfermline, Thomas Boston of Jedburgh, and Thomas Collier of Conisburgh, Fife, formerly of Ravenstonedale, Northumberland. Gillespie, who had been educated at the University of Edinburgh and under Philip Doddridge* at Northampton, had been deposed as minister of Carnock, near Dunfermline by the General Assembly in 1752. He had opposed the imposition of ministers by patronage,...
Temperance is one of the four cardinal virtues, and it is recorded as one of the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5: 23). St Paul preached to Felix about temperance (Acts 24: 25) and the Second Epistle General of Peter includes temperance as part of the divine nature to which Christians are to aspire (2 Peter 1: 6). It was assimilated into the Christian order of moral thought from the 'nothing too much' of Greek philosophy, and it has remained an important constituent of the Christian life,...
That boy-child of Mary. Tom Colvin* (1925-2000).
Written in Malawi to a traditional dance tune. The theme of naming reflects the fact that in Africa generally the name given is carefully chosen to express the hopes the family has for the child or to record the events associated with his/her birth. Here, through the naming of Jesus and the circumstances of his birth, the meaning of the Incarnation is simply and tellingly expressed. The song is shared between a soloist and a wider group.
Douglas...
The cross, the cross, O that's my gain. Clare Taylor* (d. 1778).
This hymn is dated 1742 in Moravian books in Britain. In that year the original of the present hymn was published, with no author's name, in A Collection of Hymns, With several translations From the hymn-book of the Moravian Brethren. It was a long hymn of 15 stanzas, beginning:
The Cross, the Cross, O that's my Gain!Because on that, the Lamb was slain;'Twas there my Lord was crucify'd;'Twas there the Saviour for me...
The holly and the ivy. Traditional English carol, collected and arranged by Cecil Sharp* (1859-1924). This is a carol rather than a hymn, but its appearance in a number of hymnbooks (CP, AHB, the English Hymnal Service Book, ICH5 (2000), and others) justifies its inclusion. Its date is unknown, but certainly before the early 18th century, and it may be medieval (though it is not in Richard Leighton Greene's The Early English Carols). The most common form in which it is found in hymn books is...
The one thing needful, that good part. Benjamin Ingham* (1712-1772).
This unusual hymn was published in The Gospel Magazine (July 1768), and was included in A Collection of Hymns sung in the Countess of Huntingdon's Chapels, Bath (Bristol, ca. 1774). It is based on the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10: 38-42, in which Martha was 'cumbered about much serving', but 'one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.' It had six stanzas:
The one...
This is the glorious gospel word. Thomas Bowman Stephenson* (1839-1912).
This hymn was 'called forth by a religious Convention at Brighton' (JJ, p.1093). This must have been before 1875, when it was published in Calvary Songs: a collection of new and choice hymns for Sunday schools and families, edited by Charles S. Robinson* and Theodore E. Perkins (Philadelphia, 1875) to a tune by George F. Weeks. It may well have been published earlier in Britain, and it must have crossed the Atlantic very...
ELLWOOD, Thomas. b. Crowell, near Chinnor, Oxfordshire, 1639 (baptized 15 October); d. Amersham, Buckinghamshire, 1 May 1713. He was born into a Puritan family which moved to London during the Civil War to support the Parliamentary cause. In 1659 Ellwood heard two Quakers preach at Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, and was so impressed that he became one of the early Friends. Thereafter his life was dominated by the joys of being a Quaker (friendships, such as that with the Pennington family,...
POTTER, Thomas Joseph. b. Scarborough, Yorkshire, 9 June 1828. d. Dublin, 31 August 1873. At the age of 20 he became a Roman Catholic, and was ordained as a priest in 1857. He was appointed Professor of Pulpit Eloquence and English Literature in the Foreign Missionary College of All Hallows, Dublin. From this came his instructive works, Sacred Eloquence; or, the theory and practice of preaching (Dublin, 1866), and The Spoken Word: or, the art of extemporary preaching, its utility, its danger,...
COLVIN, Thomas Stevenson ('Tom'). b. Glasgow, 16 April 1925; d. Edinburgh, 24 February 2000. He was educated at Allan Glen's School, Glasgow and at Glasgow Technical College where he trained as a mining engineer (1945-48). After National Service in Burma and Singapore with the Royal Engineers, he returned to Trinity College, University of Glasgow, to prepare for ministry in the Church of Scotland. He was ordained in 1954 in Blantyre, Nyasaland (now Malawi) as a missionary. This was followed by...
The system of learning the notes of the musical scale to syllables has a long history going back at least to Guido d'Arezzo in the 11th century (see 'Ut queant laxis'*), but the modern Curwen system originates in a meeting of friends of the Sunday School Movement in Hull in 1841. The Revd John Curwen (1816-1880) was urged to bring out a simple method of learning to read music. He based his system on that of Miss Sarah Ann Glover (1785-1867) whose work he had seen in Norwich and on that of John...
A Generous Tribute: Twells on Lyte.
Henry Twells* paid a felicitous tribute to Henry Francis Lyte* that deserves to be better known. In Twells's Hymns and Other Stray Verses (1901), published after his death, there is a poem entitled 'The Rev. Henry Francis Lyte'. Twells described him as
A Parish priest, whose anxious post Was on South Devon's rocky coast, Through all his life at various times Had clothed his thoughts in graceful rhymes.
The poem goes on to describe Lyte's most famous hymn,...
Unison hymn tune in Britain, 1861-1939.
1. Victorian hymn tunes in the late 19th Century.
One of the principal features that a student of 19th-century and early 20th-century music has learned about the hymnody of this period in Britain is its transformation from a legacy of the Old Version* and the New Version*. John Stainer* noted that the OV and NV tunes that were still in use at St Paul's Cathedral in the late 1840s were 'groaned through' with commensurate reluctance by choir and...
The group of British churches which collectively came to be known as Unitarian have been characterized by significant and continuous developments in their theological positions, moving from an broadly Arian position at the beginning of the 18th century to a clear Unitarian Christian position by the end of the 19th. Since the beginning of the 20th century some ministers and congregations who have adopted a more Universalist (and not necessarily Theistic) theology have even begun to challenge...
United Reformed Church Hymnody (British)
The United Reformed Church was formed in 1972 by the uniting of the Presbyterian Church of England (PCE) and the Congregational Church in England and Wales (formerly the Congregational Union of England and Wales); additional unification, with the Re-formed Association of Churches of Christ of Great Britain and Ireland and the Congregational Union of Scotland, took place in 1980 and 2000 respectively. The hymnody of the URC, in its early stages, was...
BEECHING, Victoria Louise (Vicky). b. 19 July 1979. Vicky Beeching is a British singer-songwriter, broadcaster and researcher. She was educated at Simon Langton Girls' Grammar School, Canterbury, and the University of Oxford.
She has recorded three albums, Yesterday, Today & Forever (2005), Painting the Invisible (2007), and Eternity Invades (2010). The first part of her career was largely spent in the USA, where she achieved considerable prominence as a recording artist and performed...
We hail Thee now, O Jesu. Frederick George Scott* (1861-1944).
Written on a train between Dunmow and London when Scott, a Canadian, was in England as a curate at Coggeshall, Essex (1886-87). It was printed in the Church Times (29 January 1886), and later in Scott's The Soul's Quest, and other poems (1888). It was then included in the Canadian Book of Common Praise (1909), of which Scott was one of the compilers. It was retained in the revised BCP (1938) but omitted from VU; it is also found in...
We sing the praise of him who died. Thomas Kelly* (1769-1855).
First published in Hymns by Thomas Kelly, not before Published (Dublin, 1815). It was headed 'God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross: Galatians 6: 14'. In this text, stanza 5 lines 3-4 were:
'Tis all that sinners want below;
'Tis all that angels know above.
Kelly changed these lines in the Sixth Edition of his Hymns on Various Passages of Scripture (Dublin, 1826) to the form that is now used in most books:
The sinner's...
This entry is in two parts, the first by Sally Harper, the second by Alan Luff.
Welsh carols before 1700
There is little evidence to confirm that Wales had its own vernacular counterpart to the regular strophic structure and repeated burden of the English medieval carol (See 'English carols'*), although two carol-like texts recorded retrospectively from oral tradition in the 1950s in rural Cardiganshire may indeed be medieval survivals. Both are couched in rhymed accentual verse with a burden...
This entry is in three parts: pre-Reformation Welsh hymnody by Sally Harper; post-Reformation hymnody, and Welsh tunes, by Alan Luff. A final paragraph is by Martin Clarke.
Medieval Welsh hymnody
Some form of liturgical hymnody was clearly sung in parts of the early 'Celtic' church in Wales. The 7th-century Latin Vita of St Samson (composed by a Breton monk) claims that St Illtud's death occurred as the community at Llantwit Major in Glamorgan was singing hymns, while St David's biographer...
'West Gallery music' has become the accepted name for a distinctive kind of sacred music that developed in rural England and flourished in Britain and its colonies from ca. 1700 to the late 19th century. Unlike the music of cathedrals and collegiate churches, it was written for, and frequently by, people with no formal training in music, who followed local traditional practice and their own instincts in performance and composition. Because organs were rare (and harmoniums not invented), from...
What are these in bright array. James Montgomery* (1771-1854).
From Montgomery's collection entitled Greenland, and Other Poems (1819), headed 'Saints in Heaven'. In his Christian Psalmist (Glasgow, 1825), it was entitled 'The song of the hundred and forty and four thousand', referring to Revelation 7: 4: 'And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.'
What are these in bright array,...
What service shall we render thee. Ernest James Dodgshun* (1876-1944)
Written shortly before the outbreak of World War I for inclusion on a 'Peace Hymn Sheet', and printed in a Supplement (1920) to the 1909 Fellowship Hymn Book. It was then included in RCH and MHB . It is a fine expression of Dodgshun's Quaker pacifism, turning the normal demands of the love of one's own country ('O Fatherland we love') into peaceful channels:
The service of the commonwealth Is not in arms alone; A nobler...
When Thy soldiers take their swords. Frances Mary Owen* (1842-1883).
Written ca. 1872, probably at the same time that Owen was engaged on writing The Story of George Washington (1883), for the boys in her husband's house at Cheltenham College. With its chivalric imagery it was calculated to appeal to boys and young men. The first two stanzas (of five) are an example:
When Thy soldiers take their swords,When they speak the solemn words,When they kneel before Thee here,Feeling Thee, their Father,...
Why should cross and trial grieve me. Paul Gerhardt* (1607-1676), translated by John Kelly* (1834-1890).
This is a translation of part of Gerhardt's 'Warum sollt ich mich denn grämen'*, first published in Johann Crüger* and Christoph Runge*'s D.M. Luthers und andere vornehmen geistrichen und gelehrten Männer geistlicher Lieder und Psalmen (Berlin, 1653) ('the Crüger-Runge Gesangbuch'); it was then published in the 1656 edition of Crüger's Praxis Pietatis Melica. Kelly's translation was made...
BULLOCK, William. b. Prittlewell, Essex, 12 January 1798; d. Halifax, Nova Scotia, 16 March 1874. Educated at Christ's Hospital, he entered the Royal Navy as a young man, following in the footsteps of his brother, who later became an Admiral. He was sent on a survey ship to Newfoundland, and it was during this period that he resolved to be a missionary in Canada. He took Holy Orders, returning to the north-east coast of Newfoundland at the small settlement of Trinity Bay. He later became rector...
HAMMOND, William. b. Battle, Sussex, 6 January 1719; d. London, 19 August 1793. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge. He joined the Calvinistic Methodists in 1743, and became a Moravian in 1745: his career parallels that of John Cennick*. He wrote an autobiography in Greek, and translated Latin hymns. He published a book with the revealing title Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs. To which is prefix'd a Preface, giving some Account of a Weak Faith, and a Full Assurance of Faith;...
PENNEFATHER, William. b. Dublin, 5 February 1816; d. Muswell Hill, Middlesex, 30 April 1873. He was the son of a distinguished Irish lawyer who became chief Baron of the Exchequer Court. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin (BA 1840; his undergraduate career was interrupted by illness). He took Holy Orders (deacon 1841, priest 1842), and was successively curate at Ballymacugh and vicar of Mellifont, near Drogheda, where he ministered to the people during the famine of 1845. He moved to...
Winchester Hymnal (late 10th century). The Winchester Hymnal is a type of New Hymnal (see Medieval hymns and hymnals*) that was introduced during the late 10th-century Anglo-Saxon monastic reform movement called the Benedictine Reform (see 'Rule of Benedict'*). It is one of two types of monastic hymnal known to have been in use in England after the Benedictine Reform, the other being the Canterbury Hymnal*.
The Winchester Hymnal is clearly linked to the Benedictine Reform movement because it...
York, hymns and hymnals. The Use of York was one of the major secular liturgies of the British Isles in the later Middle Ages. It was used at York Minster and in parish churches across northern England from at least the 13th century to the Reformation. The origins of York's hymn repertory are found in the New Hymnal, a 9th-century collection of hymns compiled in the Frankish Empire (see 'Medieval hymns and hymnals'*). Its first appearance in England was probably as a result of the 10th-century...