O how the grace of God

The Guillebaud family has a long record of missionary service in Africa and in Britain. Part of the unfinished story is told in Rwanda: The Land God Forgot? by Meg Guillebaud (2002), by which time 15 members spanning 4 generations had lived, worked or died there. Rosemary, daughter of the author Harold and aunt of Meg, was one of several who had a hand in indigenous and translated hymns. One was the Kirundi text Umbuntu bg Imana by the baptist pastor at Musema in central Burundi, Emanuel T Sibomana. It was widely sung to the tune [THERE IS A] HAPPY LAND (EH608) and printed at Musema in 1946. On bringing the hymn to England, its translator was told by fellow-missionary Fred Barff that she could not possibly promote its fine words to the old tune. In Bristol in the 1950s he promptly composed his own, GRACE OF GOD, with which it was sung at a Bible Society rally in the city’s Colston Hall. An immediate impact there resulted in the publication in London of its words and music, by Ruanda Mission CMS (as it was then known), as an undated leaflet, ‘The Grace of God: A Hymn from Ruanda-Urundi’. Full ascription to Sibomana, Guillebaud and Barff is given, but a footnote adds that in Urundi the words are sung to the tune of ‘There is a happy land’.

After a time of comparative neglect it eventually became established in Grace Baptist churches among others. Its original text has not appeared in any hymnal until now, though sometimes a printed version was pasted into CH or GH (rather as 238 with the 1950 A&M). GH also issued it in a small supplement, and the CH Companion supplied the text with an extra note in later printings. It features in the 2004CH. The minor modernisations met with the ready agreement of Rosemary Guillebaud, by then retired to Cambridge. In 2002, after some weeks in a coma, she died peacefully there on 25 June.

The whole composition expresses the gospel under the motif of ‘grace’ (though the actual word comes only twice), and with a tune which, while not claiming greatness, avoids the ponderousness of some and the triviality of others in accompanying such a theme. Before leaving his pastorate at St George’s Tron Church, Glasgow, Sinclair Ferguson preached a series of 7 sermons on ‘Grace’ in Autumn 2002, taking his themes in order from the 7 stzs of this hymn.

Although There is a happy land is rarely reprinted now, it is worth recording that many African martyrs died with those words on their lips, among them Yona Kanamuzeyi in 1964. His story is told in Meg Guillebaud’s book, notably pp157–8.

b 1915, d Cambridge 2002. Born into a missionary family, she first went to live in Africa at the age of 10, when her skill in translation first became apparent. She read Modern Langs at Cambridge Univ (BA, MA), before returning to Africa where she spent 39 years teaching, including work on Bible translation, in Burundi. Her father Harold compiled the first bi-lingual hymn-book for the central African churches, with other family members drafted in as office assistants. The one hymn credited to Rosemary as translator (though her name is often omitted from its printing) is a version of the 1946 Kinyarwanda text by the pastor Emmanuel T Sibomana; see notes. She required no fee for her work of translation. From 1979 she enjoyed over 20 years of retirement in Cambridge, where she died peacefully in Addenbrooke’s Hospital on 25 June 2002. See also Margaret Guillebaud (her niece), Ruanda, the Land God Forgot?, 1999. No.749.

b Burundi c1910–15, d 1975. He probably grew up in central Burundi, and lived near Musema where there was a Baptist mission. In the 1930s he became a Christian, and was ordained as a Baptist pastor in that region. The hymn which has become a favourite, especially among evangelical British Baptists, was included in a locally-published collection in 1946; see notes. Some time later his faith is said to have been severely shaken, but he was fully restored some time before his death. The account of his own writing in the Kirundi language is bound up with that the Anglican missionary who became his translator, Rosemary Guillebaud, qv, and an anonymous Australian nursing colleague. No.749.