Our great Redeemer, as he breathed

The Holy Spirit is rightly represented by the vigorous language of (eg) 523 and 525, and also in this much gentler text (between those two in time) by Henriette Auber. It became the most established hymn from The Spirit of the Psalms (1829, a title used later by both Lyte and Spurgeon), where it was one of two for Whitsunday, attracting myths which, while unfounded, testify to the esteem in which it was held. Of the original 7 stzs, the 2nd (‘He came in semblance of a dove’) and 5th (‘And his that gentle voice we hear’) are omitted in this Jubilate version, as in other books. This has the effect of strengthening the whole, the present 4th stz (unchanged, with its 3 strong ‘every’s) being one of the finest in any hymn on this theme. The first line replaces ‘blest’, and to remove ‘viewless’ from 2.4, two lines are recast from ‘all-powerful as the wind …’; some books omit this stz. 3.1 seems more consistent in the present tense, a change dating from the 1933 Methodist Hymn Book, while stz 5 here revises ‘… weakness, pitying, see;/ O make our hearts thy dwelling-place/ and worthier thee.’ John 14:16,26 and Acts 2:1–4 are among many Scriptures used. Routley commends these lines with much qualification, saying that no popular hymn (at least in 1955) did justice to ‘the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit’. This one, he says, celebrates at least the richness and freedom of the Spirit, and suggests his power, friendliness and confidence (Hymns and the Faith pp213–220, where he also quotes the Puritan Thos Goodwin on these themes).

J B Dykes’ tune ST CUTHBERT was composed for the hymn, with which it appeared in the first A&M, and from which it has proved hard to dislodge. Its name reflects the Durham Cathedral connection, where Dykes ministered and the 7th-c Bishop Cuthbert of Lindisfarne is buried. It has not been set to any other hymns, but HTC offers the more vigorous and traditional Irish WICKLOW (first choice in EH) as an alternative.

(often ‘Harriet’ in error), b Spitalfields, Middx (E London) 1773, d Hoddesdon, Herts 1862. She was a descendant of Huguenot refugees from the revoked Edict of Nantes (1685), many of whom settled in Spitalfields; her father became Rector of Tring. Later she moved to Broxbourne (Herts) and then Hoddesdon, living a apparently uneventful life, latterly with her friend Mary Jane Mackenzie (‘two saintly ladies’—K L Parry). Her best-known writing was The Spirit of the Psalms; or, a Compressed Version of the Psalms of David, 1829 (see also the notes to H F Lyte). This included verses by others but consisted mostly of her own paraphrases aimed at recapturing the poetic quality of the Pss in English metre, moving on in the tradition of Isaac Watts. Writing in Julian in an extensive feature on ‘Psalters, English’, H Leigh Bennett says that ‘She uses evangelical interpretation freely. Several renderings are full of gentle [verbal] melody.’
Spurgeon included some 20 of her versions at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, in Our Own Hymn Book (1866). Nos.45, 526.