O Jesus, I have promised

O Jesus, I have promised. John Ernest Bode* (1816-74). Written in 1866 for the Confirmation of Bode’s three children, a daughter and two sons. It is said to have originally begun ‘O Jesus, we have promised’, but this has not been confirmed. It was published in leaflet form by SPCK in 1868, entitled ‘Hymn for the newly Confirmed’, in the New Appendix to the New and Enlarged Edition of Hymns for Public Worship (1870), and in their Church Hymns (1871). Oddly, it was placed by Church Hymns in the ’General Hymns’ section. It was taken in to the Second Edition of A&M (1875), and it has rarely been absent from a major hymn book since that time. It originally had six stanzas, sometimes...