Not what these hands have done

If we are aware of two or three SM texts by Horatius Bonar on similar themes and even with overlapping stzs, the clue is that editors have extracted them all from a 12-stz hymn headed ‘Salvation through Christ alone’. This was published in his 1861 Hymns of Faith and Hope. Some selections begin with what is here the 6th stz, or even with the 2nd; see also the notes to 710 and 793. Here is another author using an initial ‘Not’ to good effect; cf 692 and notes. The editors have chosen the particular arrangement of these lines, including 1.3 (previously ‘not what this toiling flesh has borne’); 4.4 (‘… set my spirit free’, now appearing as 5.4); and 5.2,4 (‘to me can pardon speak … can this sore bondage break’). GH is among books which prefer to use ‘my’ in each of the first 4 lines.

David Jenkins’ BOD ALWYN, Samuel Howard’s ST BRIDE (409) and William Havergal’s arrangement of SWABIA (765) have all been set to these words. ST BEUNO, by Joseph C Bridge, appeared in 1897 and is perhaps the least known of these 4 tunes. In setting it to these words, the 1986 New Redemption Hymnal calls it both ST BEUNES and ST BERUNO; the Methodist Hymn Book of 1933 pairs it with 517. In the 18th c an older 87 87 tune was given the same name, that of a 7th-c abbot in N Wales around whom legends have accumulated.

b Edinburgh 1808, d Edinburgh 1889. Edinburgh High Sch and Univ; licensed to preach (Ch of Scotland) and became asst. to the Minister at Leith, where his first hymns were written as a response to the children who needed more than archaic Psalmody. With other young men he engaged in mission work in the city’s homes, courtyards and alleyways. Five of his own 9 children died while young. From 1837 he was Minister of the North Parish beside the Tweed in Kelso; then at the 1843 ‘disruption’ he became a founder member of the Free Ch of Scotland but (unlike many) was able to continue his existing ministry at Kelso. He edited the Quarterly Journal of Prophecy 1848–73; Hon DD (Aberdeen) 1853; he visited Palestine 1855–6 and drew much imagery from his experiences there. From 1866, he was Minister of the Chalmers Memorial Free Ch, Edinburgh; from 1883, Moderator of the Free Church’s General Assembly. ‘Always a Presbyterian’, and a keen student of the Classics and early church fathers, he wrote about one book every year; his Words to Winners of Souls has proved of special value to Jerry E White, President of The Navigators a century later. Bonar was a frequent attender and speaker at London’s Mildmay Conferences; see under W Pennefather. As well as being committed to prayer, preaching and visiting, he wrote some 600 warmly evangelical hymns and other Psalm paraphrases, earning him the title ‘prince of Scottish hymn-writers’. Some were designed specifically for the visiting American singer (with Moody), Ira D Sankey. About 100 reached publication; many were written very rapidly but enjoyed great popularity in their day, and his lifetime witnessed a great change in what was sung in Scottish churches. The Keswick Hymn Book (1938) featured 17 of these and Hymns of Faith (1964), 13. But while the 1898 edn of the Scottish Church Hymnary included 18 texts (more than from any other author), CH3 (1975) found room for 8 and the 2005 book reduces these to 5; posterity has been less than kind to his wider reputation. Among those not quite forgotten is ‘All that I was – my sins, my guilt,/ my death was all my own;/ all that I am I owe to thee,/ my gracious God alone.’

A clause in Bonar’s will stipulated that no memoir should be published, but in the year after his death his son H N Bonar published Until the Day Break, and other Hymns and poems left behind, and in 1904 and further hymn selection with notes. Julian laments the hymnwriter’s ‘absolute indifference to dates and details’, while Routley is lukewarm about much of his work, and on receiving the news of his death, Ellerton acknowledged his limited vision, unpoetic lines and occasional triteness—‘But he is a believer. He speaks of that which he knows; of him whom he loves, and whom, God be praised, he now sees at last’—JE, 1889. Like this English hymnologist, several other historians have at least admitted Scotland’s debt to one who probably did more than anyone to bring hymns into the mainstream of the church’s and the nation’s song. Nos.151, 271, 581, 648, 701, 710, 793, 801, 838, 855, 874, 1284