My soul exalts and magnifies the King

Although Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ, is recorded in Luke 1:46 as having ‘said’ (Gk ‘Kai eipen Mariam’), ‘My soul magnifies the Lord …’, Christians have traditionally assumed that the rhythmic and Psalm-like poem which follows is ‘Mary’s song’. Used as a canticle, Magnificat, in which the church takes on the voice of the original speaker, it has been part of the service of Evening Prayer (Evensong) for hundreds of years, whether in pre- Reformation Lat or in Tudor or modern English. Where chanting the biblical text is not part of the tradition, metrical paraphrases have become well-established from the 16th c onwards; 628 is the best known of modern examples.

Nick Needham’s text is more recent and was written for the present book. Of his 5 items here, this was the one (says the author) which ‘almost wrote itself.’ Invited to submit materials for selection, his ‘first thought was to produce renderings of biblical passages; and when I came to the Magnificat, everything seemed to take off with a remarkable freeness, straight from the heart’. He gladly confesses to ‘a profound sense of (non-idolatrous) affection towards Mary as the Lord’s mother.’ This was published first in Praise! Preview in 1998. Like any faithful rendering of Mary’s response in vv46–55 to Elizabeth’s greeting, it clearly shows the revolutionary character of what God is doing.

Like 85, the text was written for SINE NOMINE (585) but is set to Michael Baughen’s tune BIGGIN HILL from c1972: see notes to the earlier item. Both tunes require a double ‘hallelujah’ when these words are used.

b London 1959. Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar Sch; he was converted in 1976, and a year later read Augustine’s Confessions, which proved a life-changing experience. Edinburgh Univ 1978–87 (BD, PhD) including time at New College as student and as a teacher on Zwingli; he became the first Librarian of Edinburgh’s Rutherford House theological research centre. He taught Systematic Theology at the Scottish Baptist Coll in Glasgow for some years before moving back to N London as an Asst Baptist Pastor. From there he returned to Scotland to lecture at the Highland Theological College, Dingwall nr Inverness, and was called to pastor the Inverness Reformed Baptist Ch. He has also taught more briefly in Africa and served as an occasional consultant for Praise! His first two books were on Scottish church history; others include Thomas Erskine of Linlathen (his PhD subject, 1989), The Doctrine of the Holy Scripture in the Free Church Fathers (1990) and books on general church history, Christian experience and prayer. His major 5-volume historical work, 2000 Years of Christ’s Power, was published between 1998 and 2006. The texts in Praise! were written in London from 1995 onwards; 2 of them appear also in the 2004 edn of CH. (An earlier hymn-writing Needham was the 18th-c Baptist minister John N who also adapted the hymns of others, with a brief biography and 14 texts noted in Julian.) Nos.185, 293, 638, 802, 900.