O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder

There is a small handful of hymns which are recognised as much by their titles as by their first lines—or more so. This paraphrase of multi-national origins, and extraordinary popularity for more than half of the 20th c, is universally known as How great thou art, from the final words of its refrain and its last stz. In a 1974 poll it was voted America’s favourite hymn. Carl Boberg wrote the original Swedish words in 1885 or 1886 to fit a folk melody, having been moved by the power and beauty of a thunderstorm and its aftermath, and they appeared in several Christian periodicals including Monsteras Tidningen (13 March 1886) and Sanningsvitnet (Witness of the Truth) which he edited. In 1907 a German translation by Manfred von Glehn of Estonia, Wie gross bist Du, was published, and some years later a Russian version of the German, by a baptist translator Ivan S Prokhanov, was published first in St Petersburg and in 1927 in Poland. At this point the English Methodist Stuart Hine entered the story, discovering the hymn in a Russian hymnal Kinvali while serving in the Ukraine as a missionary. Unaware of the hymn’s origins, while in the Czechoslovakian mountains in another storm he made an English version of the first Russian stz, later adding 2 of his own. Back home in 1948 he added stz 4 and published his version in Grace and Peace a year later. In leaflet form it was shown to George Beverly Shea, soloist at the 1954 Billy Graham crusade in London. With choir leader Cliff Barrows, the singer introduced it at the Toronto crusade the following year. In spite, or because, of this complex history, for copyright reasons the song remained as a leaflet and did not appear in any hymnal for some time. Now that some restrictions are lifted, at least 3 English texts are available in various books including Eluned Harrison’s O Lord my God, I stand and gaze in wonder (CH 672/190). The text here is the Stuart Hine/Billy Graham version from the 1940s. The copyright holders, the Stuart K Hine Trust, have looked for ways of modernising the language, the refrain and stz 4 requiring the most careful treatment. A chorus of ‘Then sings my soul, how great you are, my God; my Saviour God, my Saviour God’ received provisional but not final approval. The 4th stz could then read: ‘When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation/ and take me home—how shall my heart rejoice! /Then I shall bow in humble adoration /and sing your praise, my God, with heart and voice.’ This at least retains the crucial ‘when/then’ structure, which is lost in a newer American translation from the Swedish, O mighty God, as it is in the CH adaptation. The tune HOW GREAT THOU ART, more authentically O STORE GUD from Carl Boberg’s opening words, is a Swedish melody of unknown origin. It was published first in his magazine Sanningsvitnet on 16 April 1891, arranged for piano and guitar in triple time by Ad Edgren. In 1894 the Swedish Missionary Alliance hymnbook set it in 4/4 time. Linda Mawson has arranged the music for this book.

b London 1899, d Somerset 1989. Educated at the Coopers’ Company School at Bow, E London. After a brief wartime spell in the army he was ordained to the Methodist ministry, and with his wife served in Poland, Romania, Russia (including Ukraine) and Czechoslovakia, from 1923 to the outbreak of the 2nd world war in 1939. In London he worked among Russian and Ukrainian refugees, holding weekly meetings for Slavic people at Earls Court. He wrote books and many features for Christian publications, and retired to Somerset. His involvement with Carl Boberg’s hymn is described in the notes to No.190*.