Jesus calls above the tumult

With the last of Mrs C F Alexander’s ‘big 5’ hymns (in this book as in many others), we return to the call of the fishermen beside the Sea of Galilee, and its present-day equivalent for ourselves. The life-changing, biblical verb ‘call’ comes in every stz except the 2nd. It was after the birth of her first child that the author began to write hymns for adults; her biographer Valerie Wallace wonders if ‘the roseate hues of early dawn’ or the ‘tumult of our life’s wild restless sea’ had something to do with a breast-feeding mother with a growing family. But the present hymn was prompted by a request from her clergyman husband (not yet a bishop) to write some verses to match his St Andrew’s Day (30 Nov 1852) sermon. They were duly read at the service and published almost immediately in the SPCK Hymns for Public Worship. In 1871 Church Hymns printed a changed text. By 1875 they had reached A&M, with other variants; some alterations were made by the writer in 1881 but not widely welcomed, while others came after her death. From the beginning ‘St Andrew’ featured in stz 2, but ‘apostles’ has been an established and more widely useful alternative from as early as 1870. The first line had ‘o’er the tumult’ and 1.3 ‘his sweet voice soundeth’; 3.3 had ‘each idol’, and 5.3 ‘to thy obedience’. All these changes first came in HTC and are retained in Sing Glory; Praise! differs from those Jubilate books only in the line 1, which they render ‘… in the tumult’. Except for hymns written for All Saints (1 Nov), this is a rare ‘saint’s day’ hymn, as it can be and has been readily adopted for general use. Our response is still ‘all of grace’; as David and Jill Wright observe, ‘We can ask Jesus, the Caller, to help us (5.1–2); we are not alone in the struggle’.

The tune ST ANDREW, whatever its limitations or merits, has become almost inseparable from the words (though CROSS OF JESUS is also in use). Edward H Thorne composed it for this text, and they were paired together in 1875. Other composers or editors have used the same tune-name.

b Eccles St, Dublin 1818; d Derry (Londonderry), N Ireland 1895. Born C F Humphreys, given 2 family names (the first given in some reference books as ‘Cecilia’, an understandable error) but always known as Fanny, she showed promise as a writer of verse (stories, amusements, devotions) from her early years. These could be sacred, sentimental, or witty; though never musical, she had a keen sense of sound and rhythm combined with a love of nature and the desire to be a good Anglican. In 1825 the family moved to Redcross, Co Wicklow (the date and place sometimes given for her birth), a ‘lost paradise’ and at that time a private riverside full of wildlife, and in 1833 to the more Protestant neighbourhood of Strabane, in Co Tyrone just south of Londonderry. Deaths in the family, and of 3 teenage sisters who were her friends, left a permanent shadow but also deepened her Christian faith and understanding. Pursuing her studies at home, she developed a good memory and became a fluent French speaker and keen reader. Through the sober godliness of her family and the upper-class company they kept, she ‘cherished into maturity an unshakeable faith in the natural goodness of the nobility’—V Wallace. Yet she also witnessed desperate poverty at first hand, while moving confidently among local and visiting clergy, who took her abilities and conversation seriously and without condescension. She remained most at home with small children and animals, notably dogs; and with her younger sister Anne (Annie) began a lifelong concern for deaf children and those with similar difficulties. Many of her royalties helped to support their care and education. Her frequent travels took her to Scotland and England as well as throughout Ireland.

As for her writing, Verses for Holy Seasons was published in 1846, followed by several other collections including Moral Songs (consciously echoing Watts?) and in 1848 Hymns for Little Children which ran to over 100 editions. By this book she was known; thus Walsham How, listing in a letter of 1869 his fellow guests at the home of the Bp of Oxford, includes ‘the Bishop of Derry with Mrs Alexander (“Hymns for Little Children
204, 372, 437, 842, 857.