Eternal Father, strong to save

In a quotation I cannot now trace, Erik Routley said that if an Englishman knew 5 hymns, this would be one of them. We would put that differently now; but when Routley wrote about hymns he usually had something to say about this one; it is not so much poetically superior or doctrinally impeccable as simply indispensable—to this ‘island nation’. William Whiting, the land-loving schoolmaster of inland Winchester, wrote it in 1860, possibly for a pupil soon bound for N America. He added the text of Psalm 107:24 in its Prayer Book version. The revision a year later for the first A&M, followed by the author’s second thoughts in 1869 for the SPCK Psalms and Hymns Appendix (and his third ones, 1874), mean that at least two families of text can be traced, each seen as the ‘proper’ version by congregations familiar with their own books. The original actually began ‘O thou who bidst the ocean deep …’; the present 1st line was then the 4th. The A&M tradition diverged at 1.2: ‘… hath bound’ for ‘doth bind’; 2.1–2: ‘O Christ, whose voice the waters heard/ and hushed their raging at thy word’, from ‘O Saviour, whose almighty word/ the winds and waves submissive heard’; 3.1: ‘O Holy Spirit … / upon the waters … / and bid … / and give, for wild confusion, peace’, for ‘O sacred Spirit … / upon the chaos … / who bad’st … / and gavest light and life and peace’; and 4.5: ‘Thus evermore shall rise …’ The new elements here come with 1.3–4 (‘told’ and ‘bounds’); 2.3–4 (‘across the surging deep/ and in the storm lay calm in sleep’, for ‘who walkedst on the foaming deep/ and calm amid its rage didst sleep’); 3.1–4; and 4.2–4 (from ‘our brethren shield … / … fire and foe,/ … wheresoe’er they go’). Whatever version is adopted, the unmistakable echoes of both Genesis 1 and the Gospel narratives of the Galilee storms can be plainly heard.

The hymn is now more likely to be heard over the airwaves, or for some great or sad occasion, than in the normal cycle of a church’s selections. Many moving stories are told about its much-valued use; it has been sung on Atlantic crossings for well over a century, and may well now be chosen more frequently on the fringes of the church than at the centre (wherever that is). Some would like it now to cover flying, since far more people travel by air than by sea; some have made it do so, by editing. Some would prefer to allow for the possibility of destruction, not mere danger, from ‘rock and tempest …’; and some have by yet further editing. Others prefer to keep its Victorian spine-tingling as it is. Except for lines 1–4 of stz 3, the present book opts for the Jubilate text published to much comment in 1982. The first key decision concerned the refrain (lines 5–6): formerly ‘O hear us when we cry to thee/ for those in peril on the sea’; and (stz 4): ‘And ever let there rise to thee/ glad hymns …’ Even this is not the whole story; more details are in the 1962 Historical Companion to Hymns A&M.

If even here the tune is not quite inseparable from the words (since it has been used for others such as 823), at least the words have depended on J B Dykes’ powerful and ‘romantic’ music since 1861; noted among other things for its celebrated ‘running bass’ line. Ironically or not, MELITA is named from the island of Malta (Acts 28:1 Gk and AV) where Paul and 275 others were shipwrecked, probably in the October of AD59. (At least on that day ‘they escaped all safe to land’.)

b Kensington, Middx (W London) 1825, d Winchester, Hants 1878. After schooling in Clapham, S London, he trained as a teacher at King Alfred’s Coll, Winchester, 1841–42. He remained at Winchester as Master of the Winchester College Choristers’ Sch from 1842 to the end of his life. Said to have been frail and short-sighted, he also had a club foot which earned him the nickname ‘Hoppy’. In 1851 he published Rural Thoughts and Other Poems (with no hymn texts), but he is one of those authors whose lasting achievement lay in the writing of one hymn which has been universally-recognised (at least until recently) and of unique national significance. In 1867 he also pubished a Lat version; Julian lists a dozen others which have not survived. Ironically, he is not known to have had any special connection with or experience of the sea. No.915.