I cannot tell why he whom angels worship

William Young Fullerton has an assured place in 20th-c baptist history, as a young member of the Metropolitan Tabernacle (‘Spurgeon’s’) in SE London, and latterly as minister at Leicester’s Melbourne Hall and as Baptist Union President. To all who sing hymns, however, nothing will prolong his reputation so much as this one. It is usually acknowledged that although many have written texts for the music of the LONDONDERRY AIR (see eg 84 and 942 in this book), Fullerton’s words are so far unequalled in matching the movement and feel of the tune. Some puzzle remains about their origin; he seems to have written them in 1929; that is, in his early 70s some 3 years before his death. This date appears in the 1938 Canadian Book of Common Praise, the annotated edn of which says that ‘before 1937 over 100,000 copies of this wonderful hymn were sold’. The main Baptist and Methodist collections of 1933 were the first hymnals to include them. The repeated title ‘the Saviour of the world’ is from John 4:42 and 1 John 4:14; the contrasts in each stz between what is respectively unknown and known may be compared with 406 and 871, and Daniel Whittle’s I know not why God’s wondrous grace. A year or two before writing the hymn, Fullerton said (in Souls of Men, 1927): ‘The very genius of the Gospel makes it clear that it is for all the world … Christ is too great to be a mere tribal Saviour’. Those out of sympathy with missions, he adds, have ‘failed to realize the greatness of Him Who is the Saviour of the world.’ This arrangement of the tune (cf 84 and 942) was made by Christopher Norton for Hymns for the People (1993).

b Belfast, N Ireland 1857, d Bedford Park, Middx 1932. Raised in a northern Irish Presbyterian home, he spent most of his adult life as a Baptist in England. At the age of 17 his desire to speak for Christ ‘became a purpose’ as he listened to the evangelists Moody and Sankey. Still a young man, counting mountaineering among his interests, he came to London on business in 1875 and began attending the Metropolitan Tabernacle to hear the preaching of C H Spurgeon, who came to be ‘my leader and friend’. He became a Baptist, trained at the Pastor’s College (now ‘Spurgeon’s’), and between 1879 and 1894 travelled throughout the UK leading evangelistic campaigns. He then served for 18 years as pastor of Leicester’s Melbourne Hall, in 1912 becoming Home Sec of the Baptist Missionary Soc; during 5 years in that role he visited Europe, Africa, N America and Asia including China, as ‘not a missionary but a missionary traveller’. In 1917 he was President of the Baptist Union. He wrote biographies including one of C H Spurgeon, of his son Thomas Spurgeon (1856–1914, published 1919) and an autobiography (1917), At the Sixtieth Milestone; in this he concluded ‘We may hope that peace may come’ but distanced himself from some precise ‘prophecies’ being offered at that time. His expository, devotional and mission books including The Practice of Christ’s Presence, Christ in Africa, The Romance of Pitcairn Island, and Souls of Men (1927), which ends with the stz of F W Faber’s hymn providing the title of the book. The hymn included here, as in numerous, mainly evangelical, hymn-books, is the work for which his name is now best-known. He was awarded the DD. No.508.