Great is the gospel of our glorious God

This assured and alliterative beginning heralds one of the most popular hymns from the Welsh pastor and author William Vernon Higham. It was published in CH (retained in 2004), and in a supplementary page added later to GH. It is the first of the author’s 10 texts in the former book; he had 5 in the original GH. For some time it remained within the Welsh and stricter baptist circles which these books largely served. In the author’s collected hymns (1998) it is headed ‘Great is the mystery of godliness: 1 Timothy 3:16’. It should be noticed, however, that this Scripture begins with the incarnation (‘He appeared in a body …’); the hymn focuses on the atonement. It has proved a useful enrichment of special occasions such as anniversaries or induction services among many churches where the gospel doctrines expressed here are valued, such as the annual meetings of the Grace Baptist Mission.

PANTYFEDWEN (sometimes PANTYFEDWYN) arose from the Eisteddfod held at Lampeter in 1967. One prize went to Rhys Nicholas of Porthcawl for the words of Tydi a wnaeth y wyrth, O! Grist, Fab Duw. In his 78th year, Eddie Evans was moved to compose a tune for them which itself won 1st prize 12 months later at Pantyfedwyn in Dyfed—a village within reach of Aberystwyth, small enough to be omitted from many maps. It is said to have been written in 90 minutes, preserved on ‘a scruffy bit of brown paper on which are scribbled notes in tonic sol-fa’. In partnership with the original text it has been described as Wales’s ‘hymn of the century’, and many English translations have been attempted. In 1982 Mr Evans said on Radio Wales, ‘My system in composing a tune on given words is to get the accent absolutely right. If you don’t get the accent right, it’s no good at all’. He emphasised the ‘Mae’r Haleliwia’ which begins the refrain; in this text, ‘O let the praises of my heart be thine’. His tune has rapidly become a great favourite. Lampeter was again the venue when it opened the Hymn Society’s ‘Act of Praise’ at its 1999 Conference; the Welsh original was first sung, followed by Alan Gaunt’s close paraphrase, Great Son of God, your miracle in me (which observes more carefully than others the caesura, or gap between words, after the 4th syllable). The refrain begins ‘The alleluia fills my being, Lord’ and the final stz concludes ‘creation’s music, Mary’s Son, now rings,/ and for your beauty every mountain sings’.

b Caernarfon, Gwynedd, N Wales 1926. His bilingual family moved to Bolton, Lancashire, in 1939, after years of widespread poverty, and he attended the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Chapel with them. At the age of 14 he was asked to write an essay on the 1859 Welsh revival, and during his research into contemporary accounts in weekly magazines, the quest for true revival was born in his heart. After some wartime mining, he trained as a teacher at Carmarthen, teaching for a time in Cardiff, including art, and then near Bolton, later preparing for pastoral ministry at Aberystwyth. In 1953, early in his training there, he experienced a deep spiritual conversion. He then ministered in the Welshspeaking churches of Hermon at Pontardulais nr Swansea, and Bethesda at Llanddewi Brefi in W Wales, before being called to the pastorate of Heath Evangelical Church, Cardiff, in 1962. Until then he had preached in English only 6 times. During his second year there he became seriously ill with an affliction which remained with him for 15 more years, during which time the gift of verse which he had coveted seemed to be granted to him; see no.908, note, in EP1. He wrote later, ‘It has been my desire from my early days in the Christian faith to write at least one hymn of some spiritual value’. His hymns have come to be well-known and well sung wherever CH (1977, 2004) is used; 10 of his texts are included there, and 6 in GH (1975) including its extra pages. They have been published as The Hymns of W Vernon Higham (1998), which supersedes 3 smaller collections issued between 1968 and 1981; here the author expresses his aim as to provide ‘simple hymns that express a longing for God and for his influence upon our lives’. After 40 years at Heath which saw its secession from the Presbyterian Ch of Wales, he retired in 2003, but continues a ministry of preaching in many other places including special occasions for several evangelical churches. His hymn texts are predominantly salvation-centred, and he has declined to adapt them for those unused to the archaic pronouns and obsolete verbforms with which he is familiar. His voice has been widely heard through the church’s tape ministry, and other books include the ‘small but meaty’ doctrinal summary, Unsearchable Riches (2001). He was recently involved in planning the hymn-book Christian Worship (2010), also the title of the 1976 Brethren collection; this paradoxically broke new ground by its unprecedented conservatism in by-passing recent writing. Nos.178, 275, 664, 908.