Christ is made the sure foundation

When an incomparable tune is wedded to an irresistible 1st line, we have a hymn which raises the hearts and voices of congregations of all kinds. Angularis fundamentum lapis Christus missus est is known from a ‘Pontifical’ (Bishop’s liturgical book) from Poitiers in W France in the 10th c, but may be at least 300 years older. It is part (stzs 5–8) of a longer text Urbs beata Hierusalem, with added doxology, translated by J M Neale as Blessèd city, heavenly Salem. With many English versions or extracts in use, it is some comfort to know that the Lat hymn is also found in varied forms. Neale himself, whose text appeared in his Medieval Hymns and Sequences of 1851, was revising his work within a year for The Hymnal Noted where it is given (as in medieval times) as a 2-part hymn. A&M made its own changes, and of currently available books, EH is closest to Neale. Of the text in Praise! the only lines to survive exactly (except for ‘thy’) are 1.1,5–6; 2.3; and 3.4. But most of the modifications were made well before the Jubilate revision. The most significant new lines here come in stz 3, where care is taken to establish that we are not in the temple (‘To this temple, where we call thee,/ come, O Lord of hosts, today!’), but that we are the temple. Stz 4 continues this people-based view of the ‘house of God’ rather than a building-based one, with the sole change from HTC being ‘your people’ for ‘one people.’ The original includes this truth as early as 1 4 (vivis ex lapidibus, ‘from living stones’) but it has often been obscured by the later lines. This accords with the consistent NT perspectives of 1 Corinthians 3:16–17, 1 Peter 2:5 etc. Among the earlier verses, Neale’s text included ‘from celestial realms descending/ ready for the nuptial bed …’; and his stz 4 had the picturesque ‘Many a blow and biting sculpture/ polished well those stones elect,/ in their places now compacted/ by the heavenly Architect …’ For the final doxology, cf 297, with the variation on 1.5 as in HTC.

For notes on the tune WESTMINSTER ABBEY, see 338.

b at Lamb’s Conduit St, Bloomsbury, Middx (C London) 1818, d East Grinstead, Sussex 1866. He was taught privately and at Sherborne Sch; Trinity Coll Cambridge (BA 1840), then Fellow and Tutor at Downing Coll. On 11 occasions he won the annual Seatonian Prize for a sacred poem. Ordained in 1841, he was unable to serve as incumbent of Crawley, Sussex, through ill health, and spent 3 winters in Madeira. He became Warden of Sackville Coll, E Grinstead, W Sussex, from 1846 until his death 20 years later. This was a set of private almshouses; in spite of a stormy relationship with his bishop and others over ‘high’ ritualistic practices, he developed an original and organised system of poor relief both locally and in London, through the sisterhood communities he founded.

With Thos Helmore, Neale compiled the Hymnal Noted in 1852, which did much to remove the tractarian (‘high church’) suspicion of hymns as essentially ‘nonconformist’. Among his many other writings, arising from a vast capacity for reading, was the ground-breaking History of the Eastern Church and the rediscovery and rejuvenating of old carols (collections for Christmas in 1853 and Easter the year following). His untypical, eccentric but popular item Good King Wenceslas was a target for the barbs of P Dearmer, qv, who (like others since) voiced the hope in 1928 that it ‘might be gradually dropped’.

Neale and his immediate circle had a pervasive effect on many things Anglican, including architecture, furnishing and liturgy, which has lasted until our own day. He founded and led the Camden Society and edited the journal The Ecclesiologist in order to give practical local expression to the doctrines of the Tractarians. But his greatest literary work lay in his translation of classic Gk and Lat hymns. In this he pioneered the rediscovery of some of the church’s medieval and earlier treasures, and his academic scholarship blended with his considerable and disciplined poetic gifts which showed greater fluency with the passing years. Like Chas Wesley he was an extraordinarily fast worker, given the high quality of so much of his verse. His translations from Lat, mainly 1852–65, kept the rhythm of the sources; among his original hymns (1842–66) he was critical of his own early attempts to write for children. But he considered that a text in draft should be given plenty of time to mature or be improved; he voluntarily submitted many texts to an editorial committee. Even so, some were attacked by RCs because in translation he had removed some offensive Roman doctrines; others, because they leant too far in a popish direction. His own position was made clear by such gems as, ‘We need not defend ourselves against any charge of sympathising with vulgarity in composition or Calvinism in doctrine’.

Of his final Original Sequences and Hymns (1866), many were written ‘before my illness’, some over 20 years earlier, and ‘the rest are the work of a sick bed’—JMN, writing a few days before his death. His daughter Mary assisted in collecting his work, and many of his sermons were published. He was familiar with some 20 languages, and had a notable ministry among children, writing several children’s books. He had strong views on music, and was a keen admirer of the poetry of John Keble, qv. 72 items (most of them paraphrases) are credited to him in EH, and he has always been wellrepresented in A&M, featuring 30 times in the current (2000) edn, Common Praise. Julian gives him extended treatment and notes ‘the enormous influence Dr Neale has exercised over modern hymnody’. In A G Lough’s significantly titled The Influence of John Mason Neale (1962) and Michael Chandler’s 1995 biography, while the main interest of the writers lies elsewhere, there are interesting chapters respectively on his ‘Hymns, Ballads and Carols’ and his ‘Hymns and Psalms’. What Charles Wesley was with original texts, so was Neale with translations, not least in the sense that, as a contemporary put it, ‘he was always writing’. Nos.225, 297*, 338, 346, 371*, 407, 442, 472, 567, 881, 971.