Mote, Edward

Author

b Upper Thames St, City of London 1797, d Horsham, Sussex 1874. He worked in London as a cabinet-maker. Christian faith apparently had no part in his early years, but on hearing the preaching of John Hyatt of Tottenham Court Rd (Whitefield’s) Chapel he was decisively converted. He was ordained to the Baptist ministry. and pastored the Baptist Ch at Horsham, Sussex, from 1852 and for the remaining 22 years of his life. Now named ‘Rehoboth’, the modernised building displays in its entrance a plaque commemorating Mote and his best-known hymn, and also houses a copy of his own hymn-book where the text is slightly different from most versions in 20th-c use. He published several small pamphlets and wrote over 100 hymns, one of which has endured in several current evangelical books. His texts were published in Hymns of Praise: a New Selection of Gospel Hymns, combining all the Excellencies of our spiritual Poets, with many Originals, in 1836. This included a revised Doxology, ‘Praise God the source of all our bliss/ from whose vast love springs all our peace…’. Although John Stevens (qv) included one additional text in his Selection, Mote has inevitably been remembered as a man of one hymn—which however has more than one tune. No.779.