Round the Lord in glory seated

Richard Mant wrote his hymn Bright the vision that delighted some time before 1837, when it appeared as 100 in his Ancient Hymns, from the Roman Breviary, for Domestick Use … to which are added Original Hymns—this being one of the latter. It is based on Isaiah 6:1–3. Together with a fine tune, it has enjoyed immense popularity and come to be regarded as a classic on its theme. However, it embodies 2 main paradoxes. One consists of the number of misleading expressions it contains: the prophet was neither delighted nor entranced by the alleged sweetness of the hymn; neither heaven nor cherubim are mentioned, nor is it the seraphim who fill the temple—and so on. Many non-Anglican books reduce the difficulty by omitting stz 1, so the hymn starts Round the Lord in glory seated, effectively transferring the scene from Isaiah to Revelation while removing the added problem of ‘Judah’s seer’. Many find this literary-sounding and non-biblical title either amusing or meaningless. As if these difficulties were not enough, by stopping at v3 the hymn gives no clue to the events of this crucial chapter; it conveys no hint of Isaiah’s or the nation’s need, nor of the prophet’s penitence, cleansing, or commission. It may be replied that no hymn does everything and that many texts give only fragments of a story; but in a biblically ignorant time, the danger is that congregations (or even leaders) think they have covered the main thrust of Isaiah 6 when they have not. Philip Doddridge paraphrased it more thoroughly, as did Albert Bayly in 1948 with High and lifted up, Isaiah saw you, Lord (also touched on in his Lord God, whose Spirit lit the flame, from 1947). But no other enduring hymn seems adequately to have featured this chapter.

None of these points is original; what is new here is the decision to tackle them head on (if not fully) by a more radical look at Richard Mant’s words. Christopher Idle was involved in the revision of texts for both Praise! and for the largely Anglican Sing Glory (1999) which was being prepared at the same time; he brought a draft revision to both groups which was then emended after much discussion. His new stzs 3–5 were agreed by both, but while the final verdict of the SG editors was negative, for this book the revised version was accepted. Its aim is to preserve a recognisable structure including the repeated stz (now 2 and 7), while extending the reference as far as v9 of Isaiah 6. ‘The end’ in stz 4 hints at the rest of the chapter, while the ‘Servant’ of stz 5 is Christ as foreshadowed in later ones. As in Isaiah, holiness, salvation and mission remain the dominant message; ultimately, earth and heaven are both involved.

Richard Redhead’s tune LAUS DEO, published first in the composer’s Church Hymn Tunes of 1853, was set to these words in A&M in 1868 and for many its appropriateness has rarely been questioned. Wales has, however, favoured John Richards’ SANCTUS, as in CH and GH; see 538.

b Bromley, Kent 1938. Eltham Coll, St Peter’s Coll Oxford (BA, English), Clifton Theol Coll Bristol; ordained in 1965 to a Barrow-in-Furness curacy. He spent 30 years in CofE parish ministry, some in rural Suffolk, mainly in inner London (Peckham, Poplar and Limehouse). Author of over 300 hymn texts, mainly Scripture based, collected in Light upon the River (1998) and Walking by the River (2008), Trees along the River (2018), and now appearing in some 300 books and other publications; see also the dedication of EP1 (p3) to his late wife Marjorie. He served on 5 editorial groups from Psalm Praise (1973) to Praise!; his writing includes ‘Grove’ booklets Hymns in Today’s Language (1982) and Real Hymns, Real Hymn Books (2000), and The Word we preach, the words we sing (Reform, 1998). He edited the quarterly News of Hymnody for 10 years, and briefly the Bulletin of the Hymn Society, on whose committee he served at various times between 1984 and 2006; and addressed British and American Hymn Socs. Until 1996 he often exchanged draft texts with Michael Perry (qv) for mutual criticism and encouragement. From 1995 he was engaged in educational work and writing from home in Peckham, SE London, until retirement in 2003; following his return to Bromley after a gap of 40 years, he has attended Holy Trinity Ch Bromley Common and Hayes Lane Baptist Ch. Owing much to the Proclamation Trust, he also belongs to the Anglican societies Crosslinks and Reform, together with CND and the Christian pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. A former governor of 4 primary schools, he has also written songs for school assemblies set to familiar tunes, and (in 2004) Grandpa’s Amazing Poems and Awful Pictures. His bungalow is smoke-free, alcohol-free, car-free, gun-free and TV-free. Nos.13, 18, 21, 23A, 24B, 27B, 28, 31, 35, 36, 37, 48, 50, 68, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 85, 89, 92, 95, 102, 108, 109, 114, 118, 119A, 121A, 125, 128, 131, 145B, 157, 176, 177, 193*, 313*, 333, 339, 388, 392, 420, 428, 450, 451, 463, 478, 506, 514, 537, 548, 551, 572, 594, 597, 620, 621, 622, 636, 668, 669, 693, 747, 763, 819, 914, 917, 920, 945, 954, 956, 968, 976, 1003, 1012, 1084, 1098, 1138, 1151, 1158, 1159, 1178, 1179, 1181, 1201, 1203, 1204, 1205, 1209, 1210, 1211, 1212, 1221, 1227, 1236, 1237, 1244, 1247, 5017, 5018, 5019, 5020.

b Southampton 1776, d Ballymoney, Co Antrim, N Ireland 1848. Taught first by his father and showing an early love of Lat classics and English verse, he attended Winchester Coll in 1789, where with others he forfeited a scholarship and with it a place at New Coll Oxford because of a school rebellion and a town riot. However, he entered Trinity Coll Oxford (BA 1797, MA 1801), winning the Chancellor’s English Essay Prize. In 1798 he became Fellow of Oriel, and a college tutor from 1801. In 1802, when his first verses and a memoir of Thos Warton was published, he was ordained, as curate initially to his father, then for an absentee vicar at Buriton, Hants. There he introduced an innovation to the psalmody: ‘All the people, instead of sitting as usual, rose and stood up during the singing; and I hope that when the strangeness of the thing shall have worn off, our singing will be what it ought to be, a devotional service of the congregation in general’. A volume of further poems appeared in 1806, while around this time his preaching included appeals against blood sports and cruelty to animals.

He served a further curacy at Crawley and another brief spell with his now ailing father in Southampton before in 1810 becoming vicar of Coggeshall, Essex. Here the Puritan leader Dr John Owen had ministered 1646–51; whether or not through his legacy, dissent was strong in the parish. Invited to nonconformist prayer meetings, the new vicar gave 5 reasons for declining; there is unintended humour in his printed explanation, ‘I have selected prayers from our Liturgy, because I know no better’! Earlier at Southampton in 1796 some disparaging remarks about extempore prayer provoked the only controversial work known to come from the Independent Southampton minister and hymnwriter William Kingsbury. As Bampton Lecturer in 1811 Mant characteristically took the opportunity to ‘defend’ (as he saw it) the CofE against popery, Puritanism and Calvinism; compare and contrast Toplady. From 1813 to 1815, when he gained his Oxford DD, he was Domestic Chaplain at Lambeth to the Archbp of Canterbury, before moving to St Botolph’s Bishopsgate as Rector, to which was added a small country benefice in Surrey, held in plurality. This marginally increased his income and also provided both urban and rural homes. In 1817 he co-edited an annotated Family Bible (1817) and a similar edition of the BCP, 1820. In that year he became Bishop of Killaloe, Ireland, and was warned of the danger of assassins’ bullets while in his garden. In 1823 he moved to the Diocese of Down and Connor in the north, with Dromore added in 1833; here he revived the neglected practice of Confirmation. Many prose works, useful in their day, were possibly written a little too easily but well-supplied with indexes, and he produced several books of verse including The Country Curate (1804) and Christmas Carols (16 songs with an introduction, 1833); Ellerton called him ‘a rather voluminous versifier’.

In 1824 he issued his complete (but now obsolete) metrical Psalter in several metres: ‘My Shepherd is the Lord most high;/ his care shall all my wants supply;/ lay me in pastures green to feed,/ and to the tranquil streamlet lead’, etc. More adventurous are his Pss 40 and 50, both in the lyrical metre chosen by Milton for his ode On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity. Collections of hymns (translations and original texts) followed in 1828, 1831 and 1837 (Ancient Hymns from the Roman Breviary for Domestic Use, etc) and in 1840 came The History of the Church of Ireland. Even his proposal, to Elizabeth Woods in 1804, had been in verse; when she died in 1846 after over 41 years of marriage, the bishop never fully recovered, and was taken ill and died, aged 72, while visiting his sister. A year later, an elderly clerical friend and established author wrote an affectionate but anonymous memoir. Mant was a school friend of Anthony Trollope and an admirer of the very different careers of Geo Herbert and Wm Wilberforce. Although Julian lists several of his hymns, only one has survived (in varied forms) into general use today. No.193*.