To him we come

‘Come/Coming to him …’, wrote the apostle in 1 Peter 2:4; this text was a starting-point for what James Seddon found to be the most popular of his hymns, structured on ‘To him/In him/For him/With him/Onward …’ and ‘loving/living/conquering/coming/reigning Lord.’ He wrote it in 1964 while serving as Home Secretary of the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society (now Crosslinks), so it became known in mission circles and then through publication in Youth Praise in 1966. There it was no.127, printed alongside 126, Patrick Appleford’s Lord Jesus Christ, which was subtitled ‘Living Lord’, and on which its words are modelled and from which its music is borrowed. 3.5–6 originally read ‘Going to men of every race,/ preaching to all his wondrous grace’; this was modified for HTC after the author had weighed up (in 1979) adjectives such as ‘boundless, matchless, glorious’, even ‘timeless, endless, plenteous’, before settling on ‘redeeming’.

The earlier hymn, written at Poplar in E London in 1960, is one of the more enduring compositions of the 20th-Century Church Light Music Group, and itself borrowed its title, mood and musical phrases from Cliff Richard’s Living doll. That song reached the pop charts in 1959 and again in 1986. HTC followed YP in including both the Appleford and Seddon hymns. In YP, copyright restrictions meant that at the top of Jim Seddon’s words we read, ‘To be sung to the tune of 126’ and at the foot, ‘These words are not permitted for use with the music of 126 when performing rights are involved.’ Some years ago, however, the position happily changed.

Praise! is one of the few books to drop the Appleford tune, which some considered less than ideal for congregations (let alone organs) although many classic hymnals now include it. GODOLPHIN is a composition by Richard Shephard, the date and origin of which have not yet been discovered. Sidney Godolphin was a 17th-c royalist poet; the name is also found near Helston in Cornwall and used for London streets.

b Lancs 1915; d London 1983. Tyndale Hall, Bristol 1936; Univ of Durham (LTh 1939). Ordained in 1939, he was curate of parishes in Everton, Toxteth and Southport, Lancs 1939–45. From 1945 to 1955 he served with the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Soc (BCMS, now Crosslinks) in Tangier and Demnat Marakesh, Morocco, becoming fluent in Arabic and French; here his first hymns were written for Arabicspeaking congregations. Then he returned to be Home Sec for BCMS to 1967; in preaching widely throughout UK, he felt increasingly the questionable features of the missionary hymns often chosen: ‘romantic and outdated language tending to unreal pictures and understanding of todays missionary task’—JES, 1983. So the first of several new texts were nos.616 and 866 in Praise! With 5 others, they appeared in a typewritten BCMS booklet A Collection of Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Some are included in Youth Praise (1966); Jim went on to serve on the editorial team for Psalm Praise, Keswick Praise and HTC (1973, 1975, 1982) and was for a time Sec (and senior member) of the fledgling Jubilate Hymns. 3 of his hymns feature in GH and 7 in the 2004 CH, overlapping with 7 in Praise! There are 8 in Keswick Praise and the same number in Baptist Praise and Worship (1991) and Sing Glory (1999). Until retirement he was Rector of Hawkwell, nr Southend, Essex 1967–74, then incumbent of the parishes of Peldon and Gt and Little Wigborough, nr Colchester, Essex. Nos.133A, 528, 568, 574, 616, 627, 866, 1043.