God is love: let heaven adore him

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 20th-century hymns on both sides of the Atlantic. It was sung at Rees’s funeral. The text in 100HfT is also found in HP, changing Rees’s stanza 2 lines 7-8 from ‘That same sorrow, that same aching/...