God has spoken-by his prophets

The simple opening phrase ‘God has spoken’ distinguishes the Christian faith from many of its rivals, and the orthodox evangelical creed from some ‘liberal’ deviations. This text by George Wallace Briggs, one of four to begin in this way, was among 500 hymns submitted to the Hymn Society of America (as it was then) for use in 1952 to celebrate the arrival of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Though the RSV came under fire over important details and is now superseded, at the time it was an outstanding breakthrough in clarity. Canon Briggs’ hymn, written in his mid-70s, was one of 9 chosen for use at that time. It was published in Ten New Bible Hymns (1953) and was soon appearing in both American and British hymnals such as the 1962 (UK) Baptist Hymn Book.

It is ironically inevitable that a hymn celebrating revision should itself be revised; the RSV after all retained ‘thee/ thou’ modes of speech, but Hebrews 1:1 was rendered ‘God has spoken’, rather than ‘hath’ as in AV and in the original hymn. So 1.6 had ‘holdeth’; 2.6 was ‘God of God, ere time began’; and 3.2, ‘speaketh to the hearts to men’; but ‘God abides’ (3.7) is original. A modernised text was included in Holding the Faith, from the American Hymn Society in 1992; more radical in removing ‘his’ throughout, ‘king’ from 1.7 and ‘Man’ from 2.8, it was less so in retaining ‘Mid’ at 1.5 and ‘ere’ in 2.6.

The regular metre of the hymn has attracted a wide variety of standard tunes including T J Williams’ EBENEZER (325). DEERHURST is chosen here; James Langran composed it for Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing, with which it appeared as a leaflet in 1859. It was named (after a Gloucs village between Tewkesbury and Cheltenham) and published in James Foster’s Psalms and Hymns in 1863, the music edition of The Mitre Hymn Book. Since then the tune too has come to have several textual partners, including this one in CH.

b Kirkby, Notts 1875, d Hindhead, Surrey 1959. Emmanuel Coll Cambridge (BA in Classics, 1897); following ordination in 1899 he was a curate in Wakefield, a Royal Naval chaplain from 1902–09 including a spell on the staff of the London Coll of Divinity (1906–07), then incumbent successively in Norwich, where his hymnwriting began, and Loughborough. In 1920 he was a Select (visiting) Preacher at Cambridge. He became a Canon of Leicester (1927–34) and Worcester ( 1934–56), serving on many educational and church committees before retiring to Hindhead. In 1927 Prayers and Hymns for Use in Schools, produced in Leicester largely under his guidance, proved highly popular, and indirectly influenced many school assemblies nationwide; another formative volume was The Daily Service. As well as compiling other books of prayers and hymns for schools (including a share in Prayers and Hymns for Little children, 1932, which featured I love God’s tiny creatures and 3 other texts of his) he assisted Percy Dearmer with the editing of Songs of Praise, which had 16 of his texts and 8 tunes, in 1925 and 1931. Congregational Praise in 1951 had 9. He helped to compile the BBC Hymn Book (also 1951), having in 1932 became a founder-member of the Hymn Society of GB and Ireland. Hymns of the Faith, compiled in 1957 for Worcester Cathedral, was another of his productions. The latest A&M (Common Praise, 2000) includes 5 of his texts, and they are frequently found in N American hymn-books; among them is Now is eternal life, acclaimed by Alan Gaunt and others as his finest. Others would equally value his communion hymn from 1931, Come, risen Lord, and deign to be our guest. Routley commended his ‘fastidious and self-critical mind…a marvellous simplicity, and a rare sense of lyric form’. No.546.