O Spirit of the living God

The hymn book sections on the Holy Spirit conclude with a traditional hymn which sets his work in an evangelistic, global and eternal context. James Montgomery wrote it in 1823, specifically for ‘the Public Meeting of the Auxiliary Missionary Society [a branch of the mainly Congregational LMS] for the W Riding of Yorks, in Salem Chapel, Leeds, 4 vi 1823’. In August that year it appeared in the Evangelical Magazine, followed by some revision and further publication in The Christian Psalmist (1825) and his Original Hymns … of 1853. Routley, commending the hymn wherever he mentions it, comments on its sound doctrine uniquely ‘packed into’ a missionary hymn; its ‘sense of distance, of the trajectory of preaching’.

In explaining the need to take a bold look at archaic language, the Australian hymnologist Lawrence Bartlett chose this in the 1990s as his introductory illustration. It is a classic hymn, he said, which few would wish to omit, but which presented a few difficulties in its opening stz which at least are up for discussion: ‘plenitude of grace’, ‘where’er’, ‘the foot of man’, and ‘apostate race’. Most hymnals see the need to change at least one of these; many change all 4, but not always in the same way. GH and PHRW, for example, altered the first; With One Voice (which Canon Bartlett edited) changed the first and last, while its successor Together in Song (1999), like HTC and Praise!, attempts to deal with all 4. Some prefer ‘rebellious’ at 1.4. Other changes made here since the 1825 version are in stz 2, from ‘give power and unction from above/ whene’er the joyful sound …’; 3, from ‘Be darkness, at thy coming, light;/ confusion, order in thy path …’; 4, from ‘all the round earth her God … Breathe thou abroad …’; and 5 (‘people’ for ‘kingdom’). The original 6th stz, retained in CH, has the Trinitarian climax of ‘God from eternity hath willed/ all flesh shall his salvation see;/ so be the Father’s love fulfilled,/ the Saviour’s sufferings crowned through thee.’

Again we face a rich selection of favourite tunes. Among strong contenders are GONFALON ROYAL (687), WINCHESTER NEW (348) and, in spite of an awkward start to stzs 1 and 4, DUKE STREET as chosen here. This famous tune, regularly used for 883, started life as a Psalm melody for Addison’s The spacious firmament on high (from Psalm 19). It was published in 1793 in Henry Boyd’s posthumous A Select Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes … In a selection by W Dixon in 1805 it is assigned to Psalm 68, given its present name, and ascribed to John Hatton who lived in Duke Street at Windle, St Helen’s, Lancs. Several hymnals use the tune more than once, and set it to one or other of Watts’ Psalm versions as well as the texts already mentioned.

b Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland 1771, d Sheffield 1854. His father John was converted through the ministry of John Cennick qv. James, the eldest son, was educated first at the Moravian centre at Fulneck nr Leeds, which expelled him in 1787 for wasting time writing poetry. By this time his parents had left England for mission work in the West Indies. In later life he regularly revisited the school; but having run away from a Mirfield bakery apprenticeship, failed to find a publisher in London, and lost both parents, he served in a chandler’s shop at Doncaster before moving to Sheffield, where from 1792 onwards he worked in journalism. Initially a contributor to the Sheffield Register and clerk to its radical editor, he soon became Asst Editor and (in 1796) Editor, changing its name to the Sheffield Iris. Imprisoned twice in York for his political articles, he was condemned by one jury as ‘a wicked, malicious and seditious person who has attempted to stir up discontent among his Majesty’s subjects’. In his 40s he found a renewed Christian commitment through restored links with the Moravians; championed the Bible Society, Sunday schools, overseas missions, the anti-slavery campaign and help for boy chimney-sweeps, refusing to advertise state lotteries which he called ‘a national nuisance’. He later moved from the Wesleyans to St George’s church and supported Thos Cotterill’s campaign to legalise hymns in the CofE. He wrote some 400, in familiar metres, published in Cotterill’s 1819 Selection and his own Songs of Zion, 1822; Christian Psalmist, or Hymns Selected and Original, in 1825—355 texts plus 5 doxologies, with a seminal ‘Introductory Essay’ on hymnology—and Original Hymns for Public, Private and Social Devotion, 1853. 1833 saw the publication of his Royal Institution lectures on Poetry and General Literature.

In the 1825 Essay he comments on many authors, notably commending ‘the piety of Watts, the ardour of Wesley, and the tenderness of Doddridge’. Like many contemporary editors he was not averse to making textual changes in the hymns of others. He produced several books of verse, from juvenilia (aged 10–13) to Prison Amusements from York and The World before the Flood. Asked which poems would last, he said, ‘None, sir, nothing— except perhaps a few of my hymns’. He wrote that he ‘would rather be the anonymous author of a few hymns, which should thus become an imperishable inheritance to the people of God, than bequeath another epic poem to the world’ on a par with Homer, Virgil or Milton. John Ellerton called him ‘our first hymnologist’; many see him as the 19th century’s finest hymn-writer, while Julian regards his earlier work very highly, the later hymns less so. 20 of his texts including Psalm versions are in the 1916 Congregational Hymnary, and 22 in its 1951 successor Congregational Praise; there are 17 in the 1965 Anglican Hymn Book and 26 in CH. In 2004, Alan Gaunt found 64 of them in current books, and drew attention to one not in use: the vivid account of Christ’s suffering and death in The morning dawns upon the place where Jesus spent the night in prayer. See also Peter Masters in Men of Purpose (1980); Bernard Braley in Hymnwriters 3 (1991) and Alan Gaunt in HSB242 (Jan 2005). Nos.152, 197, 198, 350*, 418, 484, 507, 534, 544, 610, 612, 641, 657*, 897, 959.