O Lord our God, in every age

An even more distinguished forerunner (see 89) stands in its own right as 260: Our God, our help in ages past. Keble also used a solemn CM for his 15-stz version. But the usual selection of Watts’ omits some vital features of this ‘Prayer of Moses, the man of God’, which starts with a credal affirmation and goes on to set out the necessity of peace with our Creator and Judge. Here are God’s eternity (vv1–6), wrath (vv7–11) and mercy (vv12–17)—Stott. Moses, seeing everything in the light of the eternal God, is also credited with such sonorous and prophetic verse as Deut 32. Watts’ version, or some of it, remains a favourite at national events, while Coverdale (whole or part) is a traditional choice for funeral services. One of Doddridge’s 3 approaches from a similar age is another of his ‘New Year’s Day’ hymns, Remark, my soul, the narrow bounds. From the 1780s, Robert Burns’ version had ‘Before the mountains heav’d their heads/ beneath thy forming hand,/ before this ponderous globe itself/ arose at thy command…’. The 19th-c Anglican Edward Bickersteth’s selected paraphrase O God, the Rock of ages also features in several Free Church books; a combined Montgomery/Kennedy version was Lord, thou hast been thy people’s rest; and the combined Psalms for Today/Songs from the Psalms includes 4 other more recent texts. Again a more thorough contemporary approach is chosen here; David Preston’s text from c1980, echoing Watts (and AV etc) in 3.5–8, first appeared in BP (1986) and remains unchanged. As in many Psalms, and as John Donne among others observes, here prayer and praise accompany each other to make the stream of devotion all the fuller. It is a Psalm to be approached with awe; the death of shallow optimism, and an open door to the God of Genesis, Job, Ecclesiastes—and Revelation. So the notes to 22 touch briefly on a danger at least equally evident here. Some selections of Scripture verses, or even of stzs from fuller paraphrases, effectively ‘eliminate all those elements which refer to human frailty and weakness, to the suffering of the community, to the disturbing anger of God, and ignore the characteristic question “How long, O Lord?��?’—as here in Psalm 90:13. Such warnings should make us value more of the longer metrical versions. The comparative dearth of tunes in CMD (Common Metre Double) leaves no very obvious tune to accompany a Psalm ‘unique in its grandeur and alone in its sublime antiquity’ (Spurgeon). The author has explored several possibilities among tunes. SINAI (from a Genevan Psalm tune, the OLD 107th) accompanied its first publication; ST MATTHEW (62) is an alternative, but first choice here, and ‘the best available at present’ (DGP), is the majestic LADYWELL, which comes in a different arrangement at 574. W H Ferguson’s tune, written for All hail the power of Jesu’s name but used with several other hymns, was composed for Lancing College, Sussex, and published anonymously in The Public School Hymn Book (1919). Its name alludes not to the SE London neighbourhood but to a small stream near Lancing.

b London 1939. d 2020. Archbishop Tenison’s Grammar School, Kennington, London; Keble College Oxford (MA Mod Langs.) He worked as a French Teacher, including 11 years at Ahmadu Bello Univ, Nigeria, and gained a PhD on the French Christian poet Pierre Emmanuel (1916 84). A member of Carey Baptist Ch, Reading, for many years, he later moved to Alweston, nr Sherborne, Dorset. He compiled The Book of Praises (Carey Publications, Liverpool) in 1987, with versions of 71 Psalms; these include modified texts of Watts and a few other classic paraphrasers, but most are by contemporary writers including himself. 60 of his metrical Psalm versions are so far published, including one each in Sing Glory (2000), the Scottish Church Hymnary 4th Edn (2005) and Sing Praise (2010), and 3 in the 2004 edn of CH; also 10 tunes. His writing and composing has taken place in Leicester, Reading, Nigeria and his present home; he was a member of the editorial board throughout the preparation of Praise! and had a major share in the choice of music for the Psalm texts (1-150). His convictions about the Psalms, as expressed in the Introduction to BP, are that ‘There is nothing to compare with their blend of the subjective and the objective, the inner life and practical goodness, the knowledge of one’s own rebellious heart and the knowledge of God…Today’s general neglect of congregational Psalm singing is a symptom of the spiritual malaise of our churches. When the preaching of the Gospel has prospered, bringing into being churches vibrant with spiritual life, men and women have taken great delight in praising their Maker and Redeemer through these scriptural hymns’. 15 of his own, self-selected, feature as his share of ‘contemporary hymns’ in the 2009 Come Celebrate; he has also served as a meticulous proof-reader. Nos.1, 2A, 5*, 6, 7, 11, 15, 16, 17, 19A, 24A, 27A, 30B, 32*, 33*, 38, 40, 42, 43, 47, 51*, 52, 55, 57*, 64, 66, 74, 76, 77, 84, 90, 91A, 96*, 97, 99, 100B, 101, 114*, 120, 126, 132, 139, 142*, 143, 145A, 147*, 824*, 830*, 963*.