O Jesus, I have promised

While John E Bode’s hymn of commitment is a classic Victorian favourite for many, and associated with significant events such as baptism, some have wondered if my promises are worth making so much of. Others observe that the text does not tell the whole story (of the content of the promises or the expected cost) but this could be said of most hymns, sermons, prayers—or promises. It is all the more vital to treasure the crucial 4th stz here, even when the original 4th has been left behind: ‘O let me see thy features—/ the look that once could make/ so many a true disciple/ leave all things for thy sake;/ the look that beamed on Peter/ when he thy name denied …’ (‘Beamed’? But a useful and rare reminder as at 897. A&M dropped this stz after 1904.) The central Bible text for the hymn remains John 12:26. The author wrote his text as ‘O Jesus, we have …’, for the Confirmation (in the CofE) of his daughter and two sons, in 1866. Two years later it was available in an SPCK leaflet, and 1869 in the Appendix to Psalms and Hymns from the same publisher. The main changes come in 4.4, from ‘there shall thy servant be’ and 5.3 from ‘… duly’; smaller ones are simply adjustments from older pronouns.

For James W Elliott’s tune DAY OF REST, see 677. The two other named options (now that Geoffrey Beaumont’s syncopated HATHEROP CASTLE from 1960 seems to have come and almost gone) are WOLVERCOTE (19A, a strong and widely used candidate, composed for this hymn c1919) and THORNBURY (579, but beware the final line). A curiosity is the pairing of the words with THAXTED (187) which both extends the length by half and requires repetition where the author did not.

BODE, John Ernest, b St Pancras, Middx (C London) 1816, d Castle Camps (nr Haverhill), Cambs 1874. Eton Coll, Charterhouse Sch, and Christ Ch Oxford (BA, MA). Ordained (CofE) in 1841, he was Rector of Westwell, nr Burford, Oxon, from 1847 and concurrently a tutor at Christ Ch, until moving to serve Castle Camps in 1860. He ministered in that rural parish for the remaining 14 years of his life, dying there in his 59th year. In 1855 he was Bampton Lecturer at Oxford, and in the election for Prof of Poetry he lost to Matthew Arnold by one vote. His published verse included Ballads from Herodotus (1852) and Short Occasional Poems (1858), and in 1860 came his Hymns from the Gospel of the Day, for each Sunday and the Festivals of our Lord. His reputation now largely rests on his one highly successful hymn, written for a Confirmation service and for many years an almost inevitable choice for that Anglican occasion. But as Cliff Knight points out ‘it makes no mention of Confirmation’, and thus has been used freely by other denominations. Whether Geoffrey Beaumont’s jaunty 1950s tune (echoing ‘Lullaby of Broadway’ and still popular in some circles) has helped or hindered remains an open question. No.901.