We sing the praise of him who died

Like When I survey (453) though with a freer interpretation, this hymn takes Galatians 6:14 as its basis; together with The head that once (498) though written a little later, it has been judged one of the twin peaks of Thomas Kelly’s hymnwriting. Routley calls them both ‘perfect’; J R Watson says, more cautiously, that they have strength rather than subtlety. This one appeared in 1815 in Hymns by Thomas Kelly, not before Published. Others have observed that the name of ‘him who died’ does not appear, and that the cross is used as symbol rather than described as an event. This is most noticeable in the daring image in 2.2, where the famous words from 1 John 4 take the place of the actual inscription. What Pilate has written (John 19:22), Kelly has now rewritten! Less dramatically, he also rewrote the last 2 lines to their present form in 1826. Unlike some editors, this book resists the temptation to redraft 1.3; but like others, it adjusts the original ‘its terrors’ in 4.3. (Some put ‘all terror’ at this point; changes for the sake of fluency rather than meaning.) At least one 19th-c reviser has replaced ‘it’ with ‘he’ and adjusted stzs 3–5 accordingly, but most editors are content with this use of ‘the cross’, meaning, as often in the NT, all that it symbolises.

WARRINGTON, also at 549, is a bold, flowing tune over-subscribed because of its usefulness. It is one of two enduring compositions by Ralph Harrison (see also 540), from his Sacred Harmony—A Collection of Psalm-Tunes Ancient and Modern of 1784. He was educated at Warrington Academy in Lancs, and says that Pt 1, from which this comes, has ‘the more easy tunes, and such as are suitable to congregations in general’. The words are also commonly set to Nicholson’s BOW BRICKHILL (which was written for them), BRESLAU (15), FULDA (95) and LLEF (22); it may be regretted that such a fine text should have such an unpredictable musical accompaniment.

b Stradbally (Kellyville), Queen’s County, Ireland 1769, d Dublin 1855. Trinity Coll Dublin. Although trained in law and intending to follow his father in a legal career, he was converted from carelessness and self-righteousness, and in 1792 he was ordained in the Ch of Ireland. But because of his evangelical convictions, preaching, and indirect association with Lady Huntingdon’s circle, he was inhibited by Archbishop Fowler of Dublin from preaching in his diocese; Rowland Hill (qv) came under the same ban. Kelly then became an independent minister and established his own network, starting at Athy, Portarlington and Wexford, and building a series of chapels from his own resources, which survives in a form akin to the Christian Brethren gospel halls. He was a skilled linguist, and a biblical scholar whose practical concern for his sometimes desperately poor neighbours became a byword, especially in the famine years. A Collection of Psalms and Hymns appeared in 1800, closely followed by Hymns on Various Passages of Holy Scripture. This latter and more ambitious book enjoyed several (and growing) edns between 1804 and 1853, by which time the total of hymns had reached 765. Being also a musician, he published in 1815 a companion volume containing his own tunes for every metre represented by the book of texts. While his finest work is in CM and LM, he seemed specially drawn (like the great Welsh hymnwriters) to the 87 87 77 metre, rhyming ABABCC. Routley rates much of his writing as doggerel (a comparative term in the century of the Wesleys etc) but his best work ‘magnificent’, even unsurpassed; Julian saw his own late-19th-c contemporaries as ‘being apparently adverse to original investigation’ of Kelly’s many other ‘hymns of great merit’—a situation which has not greatly changed. GH has 17 of his hymns; CH, 14 (9 in its 2004 edn); and Christian Worship (1976), 13. Nos.443, 447, 476, 493, 498.