My hope is built on nothing less

This second hymn using some of the same language (see notes to 778) is also very different. A compilation by John Rees featured Edward Mote’s words anonymously in 1826; the title of its fuller text when first published in the author’s Hymns of Praise in 1836 was ‘The Immutable Basis of a Sinner’s Hope’. But its beginnings were on Holborn Hill in London, where as he walked to work the author felt ‘a burning desire’ (C Knight) to write about ‘the gracious experience of a Christian’, and the lines coming instantly to mind were those which were to form the refrain of the eventual hymn. He wrote 4 stzs during that day, and on the Sunday following happened to be visiting a dying woman and her husband. They read and prayed at her bedside, and in the absence of a hymn-book Mote produced his newly-handwritten lines which the two men then sang. On her deathbed Mrs King asked for a copy; the author then added two more stzs and had 1000 copies printed. The Spiritual Magazine then published it and it subsequently featured in many evangelical hymn-books. Some include only 4 of its original 6 stzs; none now have the opening lines from 1836, ‘Nor earth, nor hell, my soul can move’.

Changes here include 1.3–4 (from ‘I dare not trust the sweetest frame/ but wholly lean …’—since ‘frame’ is often found in older works in ways which usually need explanation today); 2.4 (from ‘within the veil’—scriptural, but obscure when removed from its context and there are two veils in one verse); 3.2 (‘whelming flood’); and 5.1 (‘When he shall come with trumpetsound’). Variations are also common in other books which have at 2.1 ‘When long appears my toilsome race’ (original?), and at 5.1–2, ‘When I shall launch in worlds unseen/ O may I then be found in him!’

Two contrasting tunes have enjoyed popularity; ST CATHERINE (921) is the more flowing, while William Bradbury’s rousing SOLID ROCK from 1863, found in British Pentecostal and Salvationist books, is in demand in the USA and Africa. Both are printed in CH. A further option is 81, READING. Linda Mawson’s tune CERTAIN HOPE (a phrase from the Prayer Book, cf 961) was composed for Praise! and is first published here. ‘I wanted to provide a setting’, she writes, ‘which would attract those who miss amazing words because of the musical style of the original tune. It was going to be called SOLID ROCK, but someone else got there first and used that name!’

b Upper Thames St, City of London 1797, d Horsham, Sussex 1874. He worked in London as a cabinet-maker. Christian faith apparently had no part in his early years, but on hearing the preaching of John Hyatt of Tottenham Court Rd (Whitefield’s) Chapel he was decisively converted. He was ordained to the Baptist ministry. and pastored the Baptist Ch at Horsham, Sussex, from 1852 and for the remaining 22 years of his life. Now named ‘Rehoboth’, the modernised building displays in its entrance a plaque commemorating Mote and his best-known hymn, and also houses a copy of his own hymn-book where the text is slightly different from most versions in 20th-c use. He published several small pamphlets and wrote over 100 hymns, one of which has endured in several current evangelical books. His texts were published in Hymns of Praise: a New Selection of Gospel Hymns, combining all the Excellencies of our spiritual Poets, with many Originals, in 1836. This included a revised Doxology, ‘Praise God the source of all our bliss/ from whose vast love springs all our peace…’. Although John Stevens (qv) included one additional text in his Selection, Mote has inevitably been remembered as a man of one hymn—which however has more than one tune. No.779.