Light up this place with glory, Lord

Unlike the previous hymn, this one has been confined to evangelical (and non-Pentecostal) books through its uncompromising contrasts between both OT and NT institutions and events on the one hand, and today’s prayerful expectations on the other. In the full original text, the highlighted differences are stark to the point of belligerence, which does not always enhance devotion. One stz has been called ‘too sweeping’ and another ‘rather truculent’ even by those sympathetic to its main message. But for a dissenting congregationalist such as John Harris, offended by the wrong sort of priestly notions infecting the Christian church, these things had to be said and sometimes sung. It was headed ‘Opening of a Place of Worship’, and included posthumously in the New Congregational Hymn Book in 1859. Originally ‘Light up this house …’, stz 1 concluded ‘erect thy temple throne’; stz 2 read ‘We rear no altar—thou hast died/ we deck no priestly shrine;/ what need have we of creature-aid?/ The power to save is thine.’ Stz 3, it is hoped, makes ‘shekinah-cloud’ and ‘plenitude’ more understandable. In a more recent hymn (1983) on a similar theme, Timothy Dudley-Smith writes ‘No temple now, no gift of price,/ no priestly round of sacrifice,/ retain their ancient powers …’

James Walch’s tune EAGLEY (repeated at 783) appears in only two or three other hymnals in current use; it may have originated at Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, where the composer was organist at St George’s, the parish church. But Eagley is just N of Bolton, now in Gtr Manchester.

b Ugborough, S Devon 1802, d Hampstead, Middx 1856. The eldest of 8 children, and not too robust, he helped in his father’s tailor’s and draper’s shop but spent much of his free time reading. When the family moved to Bristol they attended the Cathedral, but one rainy day they dropped into the nearer Tabernacle Church and resolved to settle there. John was active in the Sunday School boys’ prayer meeting, became a church member when he turned 17 and was soon preaching in the neighbourhood. He trained for the Congregational ministry at Hoxton Academy, London; ministered at Epsom Congregational Ch, Surrey, from 1825 before becoming President of Cheshunt Coll, Herts, in 1838 at the age of 36, and Principal of New Coll London, from 1850. (The college moved subsequently to Cambridge.) Brown Univ in Boston, USA, awarded him an Hon DD. Among his published works, mainly theological, were The Great Teacher (1835), The Pre-Adamite Earth (1846), and a book of verse, The Incarnate One. His best-known hymn, included here, was one of several offered for the Congregational Hymn Book of 1855, and has kept its place, often abbreviated, in many Free Church collections. No.229.