Once on a mountain-top

Once on a mountain-top. Michael Edward Hewlett* (1916-2000). Joint winner in ‘A Hymn for Britain’ television competition in 1968, this hymn was written on the theme of the invisibility of God: its use of the Transfiguration led to its inclusion in two supplements, English Praise (1975) and New Church Praise (1975), and subsequently in HP. It seems to have disappeared from major hymnbooks after HP. The opening lines of stanza 2 have been changed in some books from ‘Yet men have lived and died,/ And found of him no trace’, to ‘Yet many lived and died, / Who found of him no trace’ to render them more inclusive. The quotation in stanza 2, ‘Thou art a God’ (the prophet cried) ‘Who hidest thy...