Thanks to God, whose word was spoken

One of the first of the newer wave of hymns about the Bible in the 2nd half of the 20th c (cf 546), this was written by Reginald T Brooks in 1954 for the 150th anniversary of the [British and Foreign] Bible Society. Its recognition took a little time; Redhill Congregational Church in Surrey included it in New Songs edited by Bernard Massey in 1962, and it entered the mainstream in 1969 with 100 Hymns for Today. Since then it has been welcomed in a wide range of full hymnals and other collections, some of which have altered 2.2–4, each first line (to ‘Praise to God …’), or even omitted stz 4, against the author’s wishes. In its original form as here it is both coherent and eloquent.

KINGLEY VALE (87) and ST HELEN (900, needing a repeat on the short line 5) have both proved popular tunes. CORONAE (Lat, ‘crowns’) is one of William H Monk’s lesser-known Victorian ones, never finding a place in A&M; partly for that reason it is a useful first choice here for a text which in half a century has not yet settled on a natural musical partner. Sullivan used the same tune-name; see 480, note.

b Wandsworth, S London, 1918, d Harrow, Middx 1985. Clapham Central Sch, the London Sch of Economics, and Mansfield Coll and St Catherine’s Soc (now College), Oxford; BA, MA. Ordained to the Congregational ministry, he served Yorks churches in Skipton and Bradford before joining the BBC in 1950. He then worked in the Religious Dept for many years, moving later from radio to TV; his home was at Harrow Weald, Middx. Among his books were The Economic Consequences of the Church (1944) and Person to Person (1964). As a hymnwriter ‘his output was slender but of high quality’—Alan Luff. He wrote his first hymn while still a student, and although it was not published for over 35 years, the ‘Bible hymn’ he wrote in 1954 (and published in 1962, as included here) gained widespread acceptance in many church traditions in the UK and beyond. His last hymn, Spirit of God, in all that’s true I know you, was written in the final year of his life and was a prizewinner in a BBC ‘Songs of Praise’ competition. No.552.