I saw a new vision of Jesus

In The Hymns of W Vernon Higham, collected and published in 1998, the author has chosen to provide only a few details about the writing of his texts. In an introduction headed ‘A Personal Testimony’, however, he describes how he arrived to minister in a Cardiff church in 1962: ‘I had only preached in English six times and I was more familiar with the Welsh Bible and hymns.’ He goes on to speak of the first 2 years of hard work, followed by ‘a serious illness which was to remain with me for fifteen years. The first onset came with alarming suddenness and it was at that time, as I began to come to myself, that these words and phrases were formed in my mind. I cannot describe how near I felt to my Lord. Eventually I ventured to write them down … As I continued I realised that the lines had become a hymn … The hymns remained silent for seven years.’ His chapter in Finding God is in the darkness (ed Irene Howat, also 1998) identifies the illness as severe asthma, and adds, ‘… as I came round into consciousness after that first of so many similar attacks which were to follow, I somehow jotted a few words down. They were later looked at by a friend who called it a hymn’. CH is the only other hymnal to date to include it. The author prints Hebrews 13:5 at its head; the opening suggests a not unworthy comparison with 732.

The tune CRUGYBAR is the one originally recommended, and to which the hymn was set when first published in 1977. See notes to 135.

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.