Lord Jesus Christ, we seek your face

Although this hymn has appeared in at least one Anglican book, it reflects most authentically a Free Church spirituality. But it remains not only distinctive but also ‘very rare’ (Cliff Knight) and of virtually unknown origin beyond the name of its Scottish author Alexander Stewart. It appeared in the 4th edn of the 1873 Northern Hymn Book and in the Brethren Believers’ Hymn Book of 1884, but not in Hymns for the Little Flock. In Hymns of Light and Love (1900) from that same tradition, it is one of 8 hymns under ‘Entrance into the Holiest’. Changes from the traditional text come in stz 1 (from ‘within the veil we bow the knee … wait on thee’); 2.2 (from ‘that purged our sins and brought us nigh’, the change to ‘… on high’ leading into the ‘above’ of the next verse); and the final stz (from ‘… we fain would see … wait on thee’).

Lowell Mason’s BOSTON, however, is better known, being first published in The Boston (USA) Handel and Haydn Society’s Collection of 1825. The composer based his tune on a Gregorian chant for the canticle Benedictus. It is also known as HAMBURG, and in N America is often used with When I survey. Brethren Assemblies have usually sung the hymn to WHITBURN (637).

b Glasgow 1843, d Prestwick, nr Kilmarnock (S Ayrshire) 1923. Research into the life of this evangelical Scottish Victorian author, known almost entirely for one distinctive hymn, have so far yielded little result; among several Scotsmen of that name, connections or the lack of them are hard to verify. But this one belonged to the Plymouth Brethren; he worked as a lawyer in Glasgow until retiring to Prestwick. He seems to have kept no record of the hymns he wrote, but his best known text, at least, was published first in Aberdeen by the Northern Bible and Tract Room. No.608.