In life or death, Lord Jesus Christ

This hymn, arising from Philippians 1:20–21 and Philippians 4:11–13, was one of a batch written by request during a working holiday in Clermiston, Edinburgh, in 1993. It grew from part of what is now the 5th stz, which had to be dropped from another text but which the author wanted to retain in some form. Christopher Idle had been asked to provide some texts based on Philippians for the ‘Word Alive/Spring Harvest’ week in the following year; he wrote this on 16 July. It was not accepted for that event, but in 1998 featured in his collection Light upon the River, headed ‘Contentment in Christ’. The notes there, as well as a personal reminiscence, point to the words help, hope, joy and friend, which the final stz brings together from their use in the first lines of stzs 2–5; they contribute to the ‘all in all’ with which the hymn begins.

Howard Stringer composed TRUST IN CHRIST for these words in 2000 but the first recommended tune is the one chosen here. THIS ENDRIS NYGHT, with some variant spellings, is a remarkable composition which since 1906 has come to be associated with Thos Pestel’s Christmas hymn Behold, the great Creator makes (355). The melody is that of an English carol from the 15th or 16th c, beginning ‘Thys ender nygth/ I saw a sygth,/ a ster as brygth as day’. G R Woodward rediscovered or revived its use in his Songs of Syon in 1904, where it was (more accurately) named THYS ENDERE NYGTH and set to an even more ancient and translated text ’Tis now the hour our prayers to pour. From there it was taken up by several 20th-c hymnals, with the melody varying slightly from book to book. The arrangement by Ralph Vaughan Williams, adopted here as often elsewhere, was made for EH and set to Pestel’s words.

b Bromley, Kent 1938. Eltham Coll, St Peter’s Coll Oxford (BA, English), Clifton Theol Coll Bristol; ordained in 1965 to a Barrow-in-Furness curacy. He spent 30 years in CofE parish ministry, some in rural Suffolk, mainly in inner London (Peckham, Poplar and Limehouse). Author of over 300 hymn texts, mainly Scripture based, collected in Light upon the River (1998) and Walking by the River (2008), Trees along the River (2018), and now appearing in some 300 books and other publications; see also the dedication of EP1 (p3) to his late wife Marjorie. He served on 5 editorial groups from Psalm Praise (1973) to Praise!; his writing includes ‘Grove’ booklets Hymns in Today’s Language (1982) and Real Hymns, Real Hymn Books (2000), and The Word we preach, the words we sing (Reform, 1998). He edited the quarterly News of Hymnody for 10 years, and briefly the Bulletin of the Hymn Society, on whose committee he served at various times between 1984 and 2006; and addressed British and American Hymn Socs. Until 1996 he often exchanged draft texts with Michael Perry (qv) for mutual criticism and encouragement. From 1995 he was engaged in educational work and writing from home in Peckham, SE London, until retirement in 2003; following his return to Bromley after a gap of 40 years, he has attended Holy Trinity Ch Bromley Common and Hayes Lane Baptist Ch. Owing much to the Proclamation Trust, he also belongs to the Anglican societies Crosslinks and Reform, together with CND and the Christian pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. A former governor of 4 primary schools, he has also written songs for school assemblies set to familiar tunes, and (in 2004) Grandpa’s Amazing Poems and Awful Pictures. His bungalow is smoke-free, alcohol-free, car-free, gun-free and TV-free. Nos.13, 18, 21, 23A, 24B, 27B, 28, 31, 35, 36, 37, 48, 50, 68, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 85, 89, 92, 95, 102, 108, 109, 114, 118, 119A, 121A, 125, 128, 131, 145B, 157, 176, 177, 193*, 313*, 333, 339, 388, 392, 420, 428, 450, 451, 463, 478, 506, 514, 537, 548, 551, 572, 594, 597, 620, 621, 622, 636, 668, 669, 693, 747, 763, 819, 914, 917, 920, 945, 954, 956, 968, 976, 1003, 1012, 1084, 1098, 1138, 1151, 1158, 1159, 1178, 1179, 1181, 1201, 1203, 1204, 1205, 1209, 1210, 1211, 1212, 1221, 1227, 1236, 1237, 1244, 1247, 5017, 5018, 5019, 5020.