Our Favourite Hymns

16/10/2021 by Nichola Mills

Come, ye thankful people, come!
Raise the song of harvest-home!
All be safely gathered in
Ere the winter storms begin.
God our maker doth provide
For our wants to be supplied –
Come to God’s own temple, come,
Raise the song of harvest-home!

In 1843, while we were having our Disruption up here in Scotland, down in Cornwall the Rev. Robert Hawker decided to hold a special thanksgiving service for the Harvest at his church in Morwenstow. The idea was a popular one, and though it may have been chance it was certainly a happy coincidence that the publication of Psalms and Hymns the following year contained, for the first time, Come, ye Thankful People, Come.

The author, Henry Alford, was thirty-three at the time, and a man completely embedded in the Church of England. From a family of clergy, he was ordained himself in 1833 and rose by 1857 to become Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, a position he held until his death in 1871. He was in his day a renowned scholar and hymn writer, though none of his other hymns ever reached the popularity of this one.

There are several Biblical references within the hymn – the growing seed from Mark 4 appears in the second verse, and the distinction between crops and weeds from Matthew 13 is the theme of the third verse. In the fourth verse, however, Alford makes the link between harvest and judgement stronger with a reference to Revelation 22, which means that this can be a hymn not only for harvest but also for services connected with redemption, mission, and Pentecost – it also gives it a frisson that is not there in other harvest standards like We Plough the Fields.

The tune to which it is nearly always sung today, St. George’s Windsor, was originally composed by George J. Elvey for James Montgomery’s hymn Hark! The song of Jubilee, some years after the publication of Alford’s words. When the new edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern appeared in 1861 the two were linked for the first time. Elvey named his tune after the Royal chapel where he was organist for forty-seven years. The Psalter Hymnal Handbook calls it ‘this serviceable Victorian tune … a foretaste of heaven’s glory’. Altogether, a hymn with layers!

Our Favourite Hymns

13/07/2021 by Nichola Mills

The Church’s one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord
She is his new creation
By water and the word
From Heav’n he came and 
    sought her
To be his holy bride
With his dear love he bought her
And for her life he died.

Here’s one of the first hymns we sang in St. Mary’s as soon as singing was allowed again in June! It’s surprising that this seems to be the only hymn by Samuel John Stone in our hymnbooks, as he was a prolific and, in his time, popular, hymn writer. Born in 1839, he was the son of a clergyman (who was also a hymnwriter and botanist) and followed him into the church. Like his father he served in several churches: he was curate first in New Windsor from 1862, and while he was there he wrote a collection of hymns for the congregation based on the twelve articles of the Apostles’ Creed, Lyra Fidelium – this hymn was one of them. Later he served as his father’s curate at Haggerston in Middlesex, at that time a new parish. He succeeded his father to the living in 1874, and died there in 1900.

The tune to which we usually sing it, Aurelia, was written by Charles Wesley’s grandson, Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810 – 1876), as a setting for Jerusalem the Golden. Wesley was a professional organist and composer, holding posts at the cathedrals of Hereford, Exeter, Winchester and Gloucester, and worked hard to raise the profile of church musicians. He composed many hymn tunes and also wrote the words to several, including Lead me, O Lord.

Our Favourite Hymns

26/03/2021 by Nichola Mills

I heard the voice of Jesus say,
‘Come unto me and rest.
Lay down O weary one,
Lay down your head upon my breast.’
I came to Jesus as I was,
So weary, worn, and sad.
I found in him a resting place,
And he has made me glad.

Definitely a hymn intended to comfort, these lyrics are Scottish in origin. Horatius Bonar was born in Edinburgh in 1808 and was educated there at the High School and the university. At the age of twenty-nine he was ordained and invited to Kelso parish, which is where he wrote this hymn, one of over 600 hymns he produced. Though this is probably his best known, he wrote hymns for every season of the church year and every eventuality, from mission stations to burial at sea. He was very fond of children, and keen to bring to life for them particularly the metrical psalms sung in the established church of those days. At the Disruption of 1743 he moved to the Free Church, remaining in Kelso, and three years later this hymn was first published in his Hymns Original and Selected. He also wrote a great number of poems and tracts, and translated poems from Greek and Latin, all said to be distinguished by good taste and deep faith. His achievements were recognised with a Doctorate of Divinity from King’s College, University of Aberdeen in 1853, and in the 1860s he returned to Edinburgh to minister there. He died in Edinburgh in 1889 and a further volume of his hymns was published by his son, also a Free Church minister, in 1904.
The tune to which we usually sing this hymn is Kingsfold, thought to have English mediaeval origins, but it was not published as a hymn tune until Ralph Vaughan Williams paired it with I heard the voice of Jesus say in 1906. An earlier tune, published in 1868, was Vox Dilecti by John Bacchus Dykes, an English clergyman and musical prodigy. Both tunes use a minor key for the first half of the verses and a major key for the second half, forming a pattern of invitation and response which develops a positive feeling through the hymn. Not a bad hymn for our times!