My heart and voice I raise

Nearly 50 years after Handel, Benjamin Rhodes produced in 1787 his own Messiah, a poem in 4 parts of which this hymn is the first. The aged John Wesley may well have preferred this version, and the hymn has featured in Methodist hymnals (though not many others) from the 1831 Supplement onwards. Stz 3 formerly read ‘But soon the Victor rose/ triumphant o’er his foes’, and 4, ‘With mercy’s mildest grace/ he governs all our race … Who to Messiah fly/ shall find redemption nigh …’ Among many Scripture allusions is the striking use of Colossians 2:14–15 in stz 3; for the reference to Philippians 2, see notes to 287 and 395.

The tune IRLAM by ‘Edwyn Vincent’ (Carey Bonner) is an under-used alternative, probably first published in 1933, to the more familiar ASCALON (122).

b Mexborough, S Yorks 1743, d Margate, Kent 1815. Educated partly by his schoolteacher father, he was moved by George Whitefield’s preaching when only 11. By 1766 he had become a Methodist lay preacher under John Wesley’s authority. His poem Messiah was published in 1787, nearly 50 years after Handel’s masterpiece. His hymns appeared in Benson’s Hymns for Children and Young People (1806) and Hymns for Children selected chiefly from the publications of the Rev John and Charles Wesley, and Dr Watts etc (1814), which was compiled for Wesleyan Methodist Sunday Schools. Although he was spoken of as a cultivated and gentle man, many of his hymns for children are in a heavily didactic tone which has not worn well. He had a fine voice which he sometimes used for singing after a sermon. No.318.