Hail, O once rejected Jesus

The beginnings of this 18th-c hymn, originally ‘… thou once-despisèd Jesus’, came in two 8-line stzs in an anonymous pamphlet of 1757, A Collection of Hymns addressed to the Holy, Holy, Triune God, in the Person of Jesus Christ, our Mediator and Advocate. Martin Madan’s Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1760) included part of this, with new additions; Conyers in 1774 and Toplady in 1776 made their own variations. John Bakewell’s name is now attached to the hymn (often with ‘and others’ as here) but Wesley Milgate concludes that ‘it is by no means certain that he wrote’ much, or any of it, or that he provided any of the editorial additions. John Gadsby (1855) was ‘inclined to believe’ it was by Madan. Other evidence, however, points to JB (see Cliff Knight, A Companion to Christian Hymns, p59); if it is even partly his work, it is the only hymn of his to prove enduring. Although some older books omitted stz 1, in its now usual shape the 1st pair of stzs concentrates on the cross, and the 2nd pair on the ascended Lord.

Such a textual whodunit adds some legitimacy to more recent variations, and here the Jubilate version is adopted. The 1st line is an obvious change; ‘despised’ and ‘rejected’ are close biblical partners (Isaiah 53:3), as are ‘meet’ and ‘right’ from the Prayer Book (4.4). 2.8 was ‘peace is made ’twixt man and God’. The other changes are smaller modernisations; the final lines being formerly (if not originally): ‘bring your sweetest, noblest lays;/ help us sing our Saviour’s merits/ help to chant …’

For notes on the tune HYFRYDOL see 34, where it is set a tone lower. ARWELFA (488) and Smart’s BETHANY (496) are other suggestions.

b Brailsford, nr Derby 1721, d Lewisham, Kent (SE London) 1819. He was converted at the age of 18 through reading the classic Human Nature in its Fourfold State (1720, 1729) by the Scots Calvinist Thos Boston (1676–1732). Having turned to Christ he began in 1744 to preach Christ, and on moving to London met John Fletcher, Toplady (qv), the Wesleys and Martin Madan who was dramatically converted on hearing John W announce his text, Amos 4:12. Bakewell became Director of the Greenwich Royal Park Academy but later resigned to be a full-time relief Methodist preacher, content to fill gaps caused by illness or death. It was at his Westminster home in 1770 that Thos Olivers (qv) wrote no.199—a text, like JB’s own most celebrated hymn, much altered by later editors. His few other hymns have not endured. A notably humble man, he lived to be 98, and his City Rd tombstone records that ‘He adorned the doctrine of God our Saviour eighty years and preached His glorious Gospel about seventy’. No.483.