At the name of Jesus

Of the many texts drawing their structure and dynamic from the ‘Christhymn’ of Philippians 2:5–11, Caroline Noel’s is the most original, ambitious, substantial and widely-used; but cf 318 and 395. It is also one of the earliest which is still virtually indispensable—Victorian hymnwriting at its best. It boldly sets out its agenda from line 1, quoting v10 before returning to ‘… from the beginning’, and the writer’s clear subject (like the apostle’s) is not ‘the name Jesus’ but ‘the name of Jesus’—that is ‘Lord’(1.6; 4.6; 6.1). The chief omission, as in most other treatments of Philippians 2, is its context of vv1–5; the main issue for editors has been how much of the author’s flamboyant and masculine language we can now live with. Although first appearing (in 1870) in The Name of Jesus, and other Verses for the Sick and Lonely, the hymn undermines the ingrained male habit of treating ‘women hymnwriters’ as a special group producing stereotyped verse. The writer did, however, indicate in her own preface that she dictated the lines in a state of weakness; they were consequently ‘printed in their rough unfinished state’ as she could neither correct nor revise them.

Originally assigned to Ascension Day, the hymn spread more widely long before the decline (in Britain) of that particular festival. It was sung from the circle at London’s Criterion Theatre in Oct 1970 by a small group at the front (including Eddy Stride and Jim and Joyce Ledger) protesting against a well-publicised obscene blasphemy in the final scene on stage; and in 1994 at the funeral of Labour Party leader John Smith, almost a national occasion. For those who have such things it is the ideal processional hymn. For that and other occasions its 8 stzs prove useful; some hymnals still print 7, while this book with many others is content with 6. The omitted stzs are the original 2nd, ‘Mighty and mysterious in the highest height …’, and 5th, ‘Bore it up triumphant with its human light …’ This version of the others, though credited to ‘Jubilate’, shows considerable change from that made for HTC. It incorporates changes at 1.5 (from ‘’tis’); 2.5 (from the Miltonic ‘thrones and dominations’, cf Colossians 1:16); 4.1 and 6.1 (from ‘brothers’); and 6.4–6 (from ‘with his angel-train;/ for all wreaths of empire/ meet upon his brow …’). PHRW has 5 stzs only, and makes the final one inclusive by rendering it ‘One day this Lord Jesus …’ As ever, Erik Routley’s assessment provokes thought; he calls the hymn ‘monumental’ and adds: ‘… the only completely objective theological hymn to come from the hand of a 19thcentury woman writer.’ The words ‘only’ and ‘completely’ may be questioned, but he continues, ‘No hymnal includes all the stanzas, and yet, which can really be spared without damaging the shape of the whole?’

The alternative tune EVELYNS (see 414) has long been its traditional partner; W H Ferguson’s CUDDESDON (176) is a more recent possibility, or even Vaughan Williams’ KING’S WESTON. But Praise! has boldly gone for Michael Brierley’s CAMBERWELL, one of the more enduring products of the ‘20th-Century Church Light Music Group’ of the late 1950s to 1960s. Like EVELYNS 85 years earlier it was composed for these words, and it was published with them in 30 Twentieth Century Hymn Tunes in 1960. Like 3 other tunes, it is named from Camberwell in SE London (first village, then Metropolitan Borough, now part of the London Borough of Southwark). A colleague of Michael Brierley’s in the group was Geoffrey Beaumont, then vicar of St George’s Camberwell, who is credited with the linking bars marked ‘Optional interlude’ here.

b Teston nr Maidstone, Kent 1817, d Hyde Park, St Marylebone, Middx (London) 1877. She began her hymn-writing at the age of 17, producing a dozen or so texts before she was 20. Then for 20 more years she appears to have written nothing. The last 25 years of her life were spent in increasing illness; this prompted the title and some of the contents of her 1861 collection The Name of Jesus and other Verses for the Sick and Lonely. This was enlarged in future edns, and ‘for the sick and lonely’ dropped from its title; many of the verses are clearly for private use, with at least one glorious exception praised by various commentators as sturdy, objective, comprehensive, evangelical, monumental. A posthumous collection in 1878 comprised 78 texts. But its author is given a few lines only in the 2nd appendix to Julian. On a memorial tablet in Romsey Abbey, Hants (where her hymnwriting father was vicar, and she is named as his youngest daughter), as well as the reference Mark 8:22 are inscribed two stanzas of her poem ‘Thou didst lead a blind man/ In thine earthly days…Lead me now and always/ Even to the last/ In the way eternal/ And the darkness past,/ Till I read the story/ I was born to share;/ This the crowning glory,/ That my Lord is there’. A fuller and slightly different version is displayed in the church where she was buried. Her distinguished evangelical uncle Baptist Noel (1798–1873) was ordained as an Anglican, became a Baptist in 1848, and was twice President of the Baptist Union; he too wrote hymns. No.287.