God, we praise you! God, we bless you!

Following 176 comes another recent metrical paraphrase of a classic Christian hymn. For Te Deum Laudamus, see 160, note. By the time that Praise! appeared, this was the most requested of Christopher Idle’s texts, and now features in some 40 hymnals. He wrote it when physically weak following eye surgery, being confined indoors during the daylight hours of a holiday at Meols near Hoylake, Ches, Aug 1978. But it fulfilled a longcherished hope to try to put this great hymn, familiar since the ‘Sung Matins’ of his boyhood, into regular metre—in spite of, or because of, so many notable predecessors from Wesley to Dudley-Smith. ‘I wanted the hymn to begin with “God��?’, he writes, ‘and to address him directly. I also wanted to include the closing personal petitions, though they are not in the original Lat. So many of the cardinal Christian doctrines are found here.’ This text is based on the full version, although the final lines of the Lat are by a later hand. It was sung in Feb 1979 at a clergy conference at Ely and on Whitsunday that year at Limehouse church, and published in HTC. Unlike most metrical versions, the BCP text has its final line (only) in the singular: ‘Let me never be confounded’.

Several tunes have been used for these words, of which RUSTINGTON is finer and more suitable than most. But none has yet been found more appropriate than LUX EOI (‘Light of dawn’), chosen here and for which the text was written, with (among many other merits) its high notes for the climactic 7th lines of each stz. Composed by Arthur Sullivan in the key of D for Hark, a thrilling voice is sounding, it was published in Church Hymns in 1874; the book for which it was written, Steggall’s Hymns for the Church of England with Proper Tunes (see 164, note), appeared in the following year. Like much of his sacred music it attracts criticism, but has been for some time a natural choice at Easter for C Wordsworth’s Alleluia, alleluia, hearts to heaven and voices raise.

b Bromley, Kent 1938. Eltham Coll, St Peter’s Coll Oxford (BA, English), Clifton Theol Coll Bristol; ordained in 1965 to a Barrow-in-Furness curacy. He spent 30 years in CofE parish ministry, some in rural Suffolk, mainly in inner London (Peckham, Poplar and Limehouse). Author of over 300 hymn texts, mainly Scripture based, collected in Light upon the River (1998) and Walking by the River (2008), Trees along the River (2018), and now appearing in some 300 books and other publications; see also the dedication of EP1 (p3) to his late wife Marjorie. He served on 5 editorial groups from Psalm Praise (1973) to Praise!; his writing includes ‘Grove’ booklets Hymns in Today’s Language (1982) and Real Hymns, Real Hymn Books (2000), and The Word we preach, the words we sing (Reform, 1998). He edited the quarterly News of Hymnody for 10 years, and briefly the Bulletin of the Hymn Society, on whose committee he served at various times between 1984 and 2006; and addressed British and American Hymn Socs. Until 1996 he often exchanged draft texts with Michael Perry (qv) for mutual criticism and encouragement. From 1995 he was engaged in educational work and writing from home in Peckham, SE London, until retirement in 2003; following his return to Bromley after a gap of 40 years, he has attended Holy Trinity Ch Bromley Common and Hayes Lane Baptist Ch. Owing much to the Proclamation Trust, he also belongs to the Anglican societies Crosslinks and Reform, together with CND and the Christian pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. A former governor of 4 primary schools, he has also written songs for school assemblies set to familiar tunes, and (in 2004) Grandpa’s Amazing Poems and Awful Pictures. His bungalow is smoke-free, alcohol-free, car-free, gun-free and TV-free. Nos.13, 18, 21, 23A, 24B, 27B, 28, 31, 35, 36, 37, 48, 50, 68, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 85, 89, 92, 95, 102, 108, 109, 114, 118, 119A, 121A, 125, 128, 131, 145B, 157, 176, 177, 193*, 313*, 333, 339, 388, 392, 420, 428, 450, 451, 463, 478, 506, 514, 537, 548, 551, 572, 594, 597, 620, 621, 622, 636, 668, 669, 693, 747, 763, 819, 914, 917, 920, 945, 954, 956, 968, 976, 1003, 1012, 1084, 1098, 1138, 1151, 1158, 1159, 1178, 1179, 1181, 1201, 1203, 1204, 1205, 1209, 1210, 1211, 1212, 1221, 1227, 1236, 1237, 1244, 1247, 5017, 5018, 5019, 5020.