Lamp of our feet, by which we trace

Known for their teaching about the ‘inner light’, some members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) have also been noted for their adherence to the ‘light to our path’ in the written word of God. One such was Bernard Barton, whose notable Bible hymn appeared in The Reliquary in 1836. It may have been written some years earlier. The starting-point of its original 11 stzs is Psalm 119:105, for which see also 119F, 119G; five or six stzs are now considered sufficient. Even here there are 10 or a dozen separate pictures for Holy Scripture—depending on whether we count some in pairs. Routley comments that this ‘very neat and orthodox meditation … deserves a place in any book and is probably the earliest Quaker hymn to remain in the repertory, although, naturally, it was not used by Quakers in his time.’ Stz 1 originally had ‘whereby … wont to stray … fount of heavenly grace’; 2, ‘whereon … wherein’; 3, ‘darkest night … radiant cloud … would whelm our tossing bark …’; 5, ‘gave thee forth … thy volume’; and 6, ‘that we aright may learn.’

The tune HONITON composed by Henry G Ley is one of several which have been set to these words. It was published in the Eton College Hymn Book in 1937, followed by Hymns for Church and School, 1964, but is not yet in wide use elsewhere. It is named from the W country town near Exeter; Ley was a Devon man who died at nearby Feniton.

b Middlesex 1784, d Woodbridge, Suffolk 1849. (His birthplace has sometimes been given as Carlisle, but that seems to be a mistake.) In any event the family, members of the Society of Friends, moved to Suffolk while he was a boy, and he attended the Quaker school at Ipswich. He worked as an apprentice shop assistant at Halstead (Essex), a coal and corn merchant in Woodbridge, and a private tutor before embarking on a long banking career at Woodbridge in 1810. His 8 poetry collections appeared from 1812 onwards, until Household Verses in his last year; Lamb, Byron, Southey and Scott were among his friends, and Edward Fitzgerald (whose letters to BB were later published) became his son-inlaw. A man famed for his meticulous punctuality, kindly nature and lively conversation, he was awarded a state pension of £100 a year in 1841 on the recommendation of Sir Robert Peel. In 1850 his daughter edited his Memoirs, Letters and Poems. Unitarians have warmed to Barton’s hymns, and N American Quakers have traditionally sung more than their British counterparts, who only after his death began to publish and sing hymns and then usually outside their Sunday meetings. Evangelical editors have also valued his best work. Nos.550, 821.