Lord of all the saints, we praise thee

Lord of all the saints, we praise thee. Editors of the New English Hymnal. This hymn was written for the Commemoration Day of St Simon and St Jude (28 October). It was written for NEH by the editors, presumably under the guidance of George Timms*, who was chairman of the committee, and a skilful hymn writer himself. In the first stanza it praises ‘those two apostles blest’, but little is known of their lives after the first Whit-Sunday. They may both have suffered martyrdom in Persia. In stanza 3 Simon is described as having zeal, and Jude as having faithfulness, ‘Till, with thee, faith ends in sight’ (from 2 Corinthians 5: 7). A note in NEH explains that Simon was ‘called the Zealot’ (Luke...