Peace, perfect peace

‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee’. Those words from Isaiah 26:3 in Edward Bickersteth’s AV Bible will have been on his mind as he wrote this hymn, as they are the inevitable choice of text above it in hymnals giving a Scripture for every item. As with this now venerable translation, so with the Victorian hymn; the undeniable and memorable beauty of the language may be unequalled, but can become a snare—or even screen our minds from its faded effect today. ‘Perfect peace’, however, remains the crucial phrase (cf 799, chorus); it is retained in more recent versions, and is the foundation of the hymn. This latter has all the simplicity of genius in its double repetition (in the opening words and then in each stz) as in the Q-and-answer form of the lines. They were published in the Hymnal Companion to the Book of Common Prayer (which for a time served as a kind of evangelical A&M) in 1876, having already appeared on a confirmation card distributed by the author in 1875, a full 10 years before he became a bishop. This suggests that something more than a ‘soothing, plaintive hymn’ (Cliff Knight, perhaps inevitably influenced by the tune) was intended. Isaiah’s preceding words, after all (AV again) read ‘We have a strong city … Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in’—this too being part of a song to be sung ‘in that day’.

It was a sermon by the vicar of Harrogate, Canon Gibbons, on v3, however, which prompted the writing of what has become the author’s most enduring hymn, featured in books of all persuasions. It was written on the Sunday afternoon following the sermon, virtually at the bedside of a dying relative (Archdeacon Hill of Liverpool) whom Bickersteth was visiting during his Yorks holiday, and read to his own family at teatime. The implication of its stzs is that the answers to the questions in each 1st line are found in the 2nd, in Jesus. Changes made here, reading the text as a 10 10 metre, are in 1.2 (according to Hebrews 12.24 the blood of Jesus ‘speaks’, but to say it ‘whispers’ is to over-stretch the metaphor); 3.2 (for ‘On Jesus’ bosom naught but peace …’); 4 (where HTC uses the lines adopted here, since ‘with loved ones far away’ can be ambiguous, and ‘we are safe, and they’ infelicitous); and 7.2 (‘when’ for ‘and’). The Jubilate version has other changes and additions not followed here. In 1974 Kevin Mayhew first published his song which uses Bickersteth’s opening phrase, Peace, perfect peace, is the gift of Christ our Lord.

Unusually, the first tune PAX TECUM (‘peace be with you’—singular) comes over the joint names of George Thomas Caldbeck and Charles J Vincent. It was the former who composed the melody for the hymn while still in missionary training; he offered it to the author, who in turn gave it to Vincent (as the music editor of the HCBCP) who provided the harmony and accepted it for the 1877 edn of the book. When Caldbeck was arrested in 1908 for selling Scripture text cards from door to door without a licence, the magistrate who heard the case discovered that he was composer of the tune, and immediately dismissed the charge. SONG 46, by contrast, is the work of Orlando Gibbons. It featured in George Wither’s Hymnes and Songs of the Church in 1623, as the first part of the tune set to a Christmas hymn A song of joy unto the Lord we sing. There it is known as SONG 47 but the present name, first given in error in 1856, has persisted. This classic tune is also suitable (among other texts) for 68 and (with some adjustment) 581.

b Islington, N London (Middx) 1825, d Paddington, W London (Middx) 1906. Trinity Coll Cambridge (BA 1847, MA). One of a long and continuing dynasty of mainly Anglican (and clerical) Bickersteths, his father was a classic and godly old-school evangelical with a great concern for sound hymnody. EHB was ordained in 1848 to a curacy at Banningham, nr N Walsham, Norfolk. For 30 years he was Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead, N London (1855–85); and then after a brief time as Dean of Gloucester he served as Bp of Exeter until illness hastened his retirement in 1900. He remained a keen supporter of the overseas work of CMS and other evangelistic enterprises. In 1849 he published Poems; and Psalms and Hymns in 1858, based on the work of his father Edward senr who wrote the Psalm-based Oh for a single heart for God (see the Introduction to this present book); and in 1867, Christian Psalmody; Yesterday, Today and For Ever (opening with 7 hymns on the Scriptures). He suggested suitable Scripture texts for tombstones, with a dozen varied metrical epitaphs, varying from couplets to 5-stz poems. In 1870 he compiled and edited the 1st edn of what became the standard evangelical book (2nd edn 1877), the Hymnal Companion to the Book of Common Prayer, signing the Preface simply ‘E H Exon’ (for Exeter). His own work was collected in 1883 as From Year to Year, including hymns and other verses arranged to match the church’s calendar. 11 of his hymns were chosen for the Church Missionary Hymn Book of 1899, published to mark the CMS centenary. CH includes 3 of these; Christian Praise (1957) had 4. Routley thought that his best hymn was O God, the rock of ages, who evermore hast been, while admitting that it was more popular in the USA than in Britain where, however, some Free Ch books feature it. But not his least gift to today’s church is his editorial ‘rescue from oblivion’ (in 1870) of no.363, at least in England. In the USA it has never needed to be rescued. A biography by Francis K Y Aglionby appeared in 1907. No.797.