Lord, I was blind; I could not see

Appropriately enough, this hymn has become a minor classic through its clarity, structure and perfect match of text and tune. It begins with John 9:25 (for which see also 694), and in 3 further stzs and a summary parallels blindness with three other disabilities—if death is rightly so called—which are symbols of deeper maladies in the Gospels as elsewhere. But William Tidd Matson wrote these lines in a longer poem The Inner Life, published in his own works in 1866 and 1894; they describe what he himself experienced in a deep inner change or conversion while a student aged 20, in 1853. It was included in Henry Allon’s Supplemental Hymns in 1868, headed ‘Christ, the life of men’ and by the 1880s had begun to appear in main Free Church hymnals, as it has continued to do. Other references are to Isaiah 35:1–6 and 52:14 (the ‘marred visage’, AV) and to Ephesians 2:1–8 (NB ‘But now’ at v13).

The original of 2.4, now usually changed, was ‘and sweet are all thy words, and dear’; some books have ‘uttered’ instead of ‘spoken’. 3.4 was ‘… thine eager praises wake’; but the main adjustments are needed in stz 4, from ‘… I could not stir/ my lifeless soul to come to thee;/ but now, since thou has quickened me,/ I rise from sin’s dark sepulchre.’ In any version, not the least merit of the text is the rhyme scheme abba, which gives both a heightened expectation and a delayed but satisfying conclusion to each metaphor of
transformation in turn.

Although other tunes have been set to the text, Alfred Scott-Gatty’s BODMIN has proved an ideal partner, suited to these words more than to others. Named after the original county town of Cornwall, it was first published in the RC Arundel Hymns in 1902 as a setting (like the original MELCOMBE, 119F) for O Salutaris. The 1951 Congregational Praise claims to be the first Protestant hymn book to include it, set there to two other hymns including 731 in Praise!

b W Hackney, London 1833, d Portsea, Hants 1899. Named after his godfather, the leading QC Wm Tidd, he was educated privately under the Rev J M Gould, then at St John’s Coll Cambridge and the Agricultural and Chemical Coll, Kennington, Surrey (SE London). An Anglican who after a notable spiritual renewal embraced first Methodism (New Connexion, 1853) then Congregationalism, in 1857 he trained for the ministry at Cotton End Academy (Institute) near Bedford, and was ordained in 1860 to a pastorate in Havant, Hants. He later served for 9 years at Gosport Old Meeting (now Bury Rd Church); then at Highbury Chapel, Portsmouth; Stratford (E London); Rothwell (Northants); and Sarisbury Green (nr Fareham, Hants) from 1885 to his retirement in 1897. The new chapel there was named the ‘William Tidd Matson Memorial Church’. He was an enthusiast for Sunday Schools, and president of the Portsmouth Sunday Sch Union in 1880, a year in which the centenary of the movement was celebrated. He published 9 volumes of (mainly) verse, 1857–1894, from A Summer Evening Review to The Poetical Works of W Tidd Matson. Several of his hymn texts were written to be sung to German chorale tunes, but his most enduring texts are the products of his earlier years. ‘Somewhat lacking in lyric energy’ but still ‘far above the average’ is W Garrett Horder’s reluctant commendation in Julian. 5 texts find a place in the 1951 Congregational Praise; several books still have 2 of these, but only his best-known hymn seems to have been much appreciated in N America. Nos.156, 690.