Forty days and forty nights

The memorable phrase from Matthew 4:2 (echoing Exodus 24:18; Mark and Luke have simply ‘forty days’) is both historically specific and biblically symbolic; in his 1st and 3rd lines George Smyttan uses it to announce his subject and virtually to determine his metre. The ‘prowling beasts’ are from Mark 1:13. Its original 9 stzs, now invariably emended and selected, do not specify 3 distinct temptations but relate Christ’s ‘undefiled’ resistance to them with our need of similar endurance, in the spirit of Hebrews 2:18, 4:15 and similar encouragements. They appeared in The Penny Post of March 1856, under ‘Poetry for Lent’ and signed GHS, and constitute the one hymn of his to reach the mainstream hymnals where it has held its unique place since 1861. In that year Francis Pott included 6 stzs, much revised, in his Hymns Fitted to the Order of Common Prayer, which were also launched in A&M. The Anglican Hymn Book moved the text in a more biblical direction in 1965, removing ‘glad with thee to suffer pain’; HTC omitted one stz (losing the reference to the angels which comes in Matthew and Mark) and further adapted 2.1–2, stz 4 and 5.1–2, while Praise! has ‘and’ for ‘of’ at 3.2, and a new last line to replace ‘at the eternal Eastertide’.

HEINLEIN is the near-universal tune for these words, named from Paul Heinlein who was once thought to be its composer. But where it appears in the Nürnbergisches Gesangbuch of 1676–77 it has the initials MH, now thought to stand for Martin Herbst, the youthful rector in Eisleben. Originally set to Aus der Tiefe (‘Out of the deep’), it was aptly paired with Smyttan’s words in A&M.

b ?Bombay (Mumbai), India c1822, d Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 1870. Corpus Christi Coll Cambridge (BA 1845); ordained in 1848. He was briefly curate of Ellington nr Alnwick, Northumberland; then Rector of Hawksworth nr Newark-on-Trent, Notts, from 1850 until ill health compelled to him resign in 1859. He died suddenly while travelling in Germany alone and unknown there, and was buried in a pauper’s grave labelled ‘Smyttan, England’. Among his writings were Thoughts in Verse for the Afflicted (1849) and Mission Songs and Ballads (1860); appropriately, his one enduring hymn also features in MP. 4 of his hymns appeared in the 1864 collection Lyra Eucharistica. No.390.