By Christ redeemed, in Christ restored

By its insistent refrain, borrowed from 1 Corinthians 11:26 but not quite unvaried, George Rawson’s hymn resembles the original of 641 without the difficulty each time of ‘thee’. Clearly the Communion service had a forward-looking expectancy from the beginning, since this NT phrase comes from the earliest surviving account of the meal. Himself a Congregationalist, he wrote it in 1857 for Psalms and Hymns for the use of the Baptist Denomination, which he helped to edit and where it was published the following year. Variations have crept in since then, including line 1 which originally had ‘… to God restored.’ ‘Feeble’ moves to ‘faltering’ in stz 2, ‘streams’ to ‘drops’ in 3 (which the author had already revised), ‘trump’ to ‘trumpet’ in 5, and 6.1 was ‘O blessed hope! with this elate’. But apart from ‘comes’ for ‘come’ in each 4th line, the main changes here are in stz 4, from ‘And thus that dark betrayal night/ with the last advent we unite,/ by one blest chain of loving rite.’ In 1988 Margaret Clarkson rewrote stz 6, and her version appears in The Worshiping Church (Hope, 1990).

Frederick Maker’s IN MEMORIAM, with its strong final-line emphasis, is set to these words in the Bristol Tune Book, 2nd series 1876. It adds to an earlier tune of the same name by Sullivan (758) and a later one by Roberts (50 etc) in this book; in others, Stainer’s sometimes makes a 4th. J B Dykes’ ALMSGIVING (210) and Norman Cocker’s RIPPONDEN are also in use.

b Leeds, Yorks 1807, d Clifton, Bristol 1889. Manchester Grammar Sch; he qualified and practised as a solicitor and belonged to the Congregational church. With Conder and others he edited The Leeds Hymn Book in 1853, the most successful of many private collections for the thriving chapels of that time. He also assisted with Psalms and Hymns for the use of the Baptist Denomination (1858), which includes 27 of his own texts; he wrote some 80 in all. A vigorous and more liberal Free Ch favourite, now as then, is We limit not the truth of God, with a refrain closely modelled on Pastor John Robinson’s address to the ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ in 1620: ‘The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth from his word’. The hymns originally appeared over the ascription ‘A Leeds Layman’; in 1876 GR published Hymns, Verses and Chants, and in 1885, Songs of Spiritual Thought. In retirement at Clifton, Bristol, he attended the local Highbury Chapel. 5 of his hymns are in the 1951 Congregational Praise and 5 (with 3 overlapping) in the 1962 Baptist Hymn Book; CH and GH each have 4. In Julian, W R Stevenson commends their refined and delicate thought and language, while regretting some of the author’s revisions of his own texts. No.645.