There is a name I love to hear

There are more hymns to come on the name of Jesus (625 among the finest), but the final one of this series delighting in that name was first known in 1855, as 9 stzs printed on hymnsheets and leaflets. Its publication came in 1859, with Sacred Poems and Prose from its author Frederick Whitfield, published in Dublin where it was written. By 1864 it had reached N America, where it soon attracted a refrain in ‘gospel song’ style, ‘O, how I love Jesus’, which is sometimes attached to this or other hymns but tends to move their character towards sentimentality and self-centredness. It would certainly pre-empt the final stz appearing here as the 5th. More common in Britain (as in the 1986 New Redemption Hymnal) is the equally alien refrain ‘Oh, how I love the Saviour’s name …’

Hymnals wishing to preserve at least the structure of the original (without either its length or precise wording, since different arrangements and texts are widespread) tend to attach tunes which clearly need no chorus. One such is STRACATHRO, repeated in the key of D at 600. The music originated c1849 at St George’s Church Edinburgh where its composer Charles Hutcheson belonged. It was printed in Glasgow in 1851, in Mitchison’s Improved and Enlarged Edition of Robertson’s Selection of Sacred Music, set to O for a closer walk with God (here 811). The tune name was that of a mansion nr Brechin bought in 1848 by the composer’s friend and Glasgow’s Lord Provost, Sir James Campbell. It became a popular Psalm tune, ‘with a very beautiful line of melody, characteristic of the “softening��? influence Methodist [?] hymnody was beginning to have on the dour puritanism of existing Scottish psalmody’ (The Baptist Hymn Bk Companion, 1962/67). But the notes in BHBC are now superseded by those in the Rejoice and Sing companion which, however, agrees on the gracefulness of this expressive melody. JAZER (771) is named as an alternative tune.

b Threapwood, Shrops (or Ches?) 1829, d Lower Norwood, nr Croydon, Surrey 1904. Trinity Coll Dublin (BA 1859). Following ordination and a curacy at Otley, W Yorks, he served as Vicar of Kirby and Ravensworth in N Yorks from 1861 to 1865. He then moved south permanently and after further parish appointments at St Giles-in-the-Fields (C London), Bexley (Kent) and Emmanuel, Wimbledon (Surrey), his major incumbency was at St Mary-in-the-Castle, Hastings (Sussex), 1875–99. He served as Association Secretary for the Irish Church Missions; his 4 sons were all ordained. In retirement (from the age of 70) he lived at S Norwood, now in Gtr London. The first of his many hymns was written in his student days at Dublin; he wrote another for ICM, and published over 30 books of verse and prose including biblical and devotional studies such as Quiet Hours in the Sanctuary. 26 of his hymns featured in Sacred Poems and Prose (1861, not long after ordination); together with the text included here, his best-known hymn has been I need thee, precious Jesus. No.343.