Have you heard the voice of Jesus

The 3rd of this author’s 4 hymns to be included is, like the others, found in his collected The Hymns of W Vernon Higham, 1998. There too it opens the section called ‘The Gospel’ and is headed by Isaiah 6:8, while also using Mark 1:16–20 and 10:28 etc. 21 years earlier it was published in CH (Cliff Knight called it in 1994 ‘this comparatively modern hymn’), but until now has not appeared in other hymnals. In its inversions, its mixture of rhyme and assonance, its focusing on the cross, and its use of the ‘kiss’ of God (cf Psalm 85:10, Song 1:2 etc) it is reminiscent of 424, that earlier product of a Welsh mind, heart and pen. It avoids archaic verbs or pronouns. A 4th stz, omitted here, begins ‘Will you hear the voice of Jesus/ calling home to mansions fair?’ (cf John 14:2 AV) and ends ‘for they never are confounded/ who believed and Jesus found’ (cf the conclusion of Te Deum Laudamus, Prayer Book version).

The author suggests LUX EOI (177) as a possible tune, but the very different DIM OND JESU/IESU is normally preferred, as here. This arrangement by Christopher Norton is the 2nd of two quite different versions he provided for the 1993 Hymns for the People; it seems even more appropriate to these words, and their similarity to 424 has no doubt influenced the choice of the same melody.

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.