Gather us in, thou love that fillest all

Gather us in, thou love that fillest all. George Matheson* (1842-1906). Written in 1890, and first published in Matheson’s Sacred Songs (1890). It is a most unusual hymn, characteristic of Matheson’s unexpected turns of thought and fertile poetic imagination (although blind, he uses the rainbow image, as he does in ‘O love that wilt not let me go’*). Percy Dearmer*, who included it in SofPE, described it as ‘unlike any other missionary hymn, and full of originality’ (Songs of Praise Discussed, 1933, p. 262). It was printed in BBCHB, in a shortened form, omitting stanzas 4 and 5, but apart from the Scottish CH4, which also omits those stanzas, the only modern books to include it are the...