When this passing world is done

With this text, Robert Murray M’Cheyne joins two notable (if not large) groups of authors. He is among those Christian leaders who are widely known for other achievements but also for one outstanding and enduring hymn, however many more they wrote; and he is a hymnwriter the brevity of whose earthly life comes to mind whenever we read the dates beneath a hymn. Among the first group are perhaps Bonhoeffer, Brooks, Fullerton, Marshman, Olivers, R Hill, Ryland and Spurgeon; among the latter, M Bruce, Edith Cherry and H K White—neither list being at all complete. This author wrote his hymn during his first year in Dundee, the city he wept over (says F W Boreham) as Jesus wept over Jerusalem. He saw it published in The Scottish Christian Herald for 20 May 1837. It was headed ‘I am debtor’ (Romans 1:14). He was then 24, and had just six more years ahead of him; though his health was not good, he was nearer than he or his large congregation could have guessed to the moments he anticipates in his text. It then had 9 stzs; Praise! has taken 4 of those most often used, with some changes: a ‘yon’ and an ‘o’er’ are replaced at 1.2,4; 2.3–4 read ‘when I see thee as thou art,/ love thee with unsinning heart’; and 4.2, ‘wakened up …’ Like others in this final section 10c, it may also be appropriate for 3h, 80, or 10a. It featured posthumously in the writer’s collected Songs of Sion to cheer and guide Pilgrims on their way to the New Jerusalem, with texts written 1831–1841.

Tunes in use include ARFON and WELLS (54 and 80); William Bradbury’s ALETTA, chosen by Sankey, was not taken up in Britain. Linda Mawson’s M’CHEYNE arose partly through a time-lag and a double-booking. The composer writes, ‘I had long ago written a tune for some Christmas words to use at our church as a choir item. While working on Praise! I had collected, and still have, a file of tunes in each metre, from various sources. We were looking through the traditional hymns and discussed our misgivings over the tune for When this passing world is done. I turned to my folder and discovered this tune, which was unsuitable for the last two lines of that hymn … I wrote two alternative endings for the music committee to comment on. By the time they had dissected both versions, David Cowen ventured that we now had two tunes, both of which would work well in this metre. David Preston chose WOODSIDE for Psalm 2 and I named the other M’CHEYNE.’ It appears here in print for the first time.

b Edinburgh 1813, d Dundee, Forfarshire 1843. Edinburgh High Sch; Univ of Edinburgh. An early enthusiast for the arts, especially poetry and music, and for sport, notably gymnastics, he retained all these interests as an adult. His elder brother David, the most evangelically-minded of a churchgoing family, died in 1831; his death had a profound effect on Robert (then aged 18) who dated his conversion from that day. 10 weeks later he was accepted to study divinity under Prof Thomas Chalmers who became his mentor. RMM joined the Missionary Assn, met Alexander Duff (the first Ch of Scotland missionary) and did voluntary work in some of Edinburgh’s neediest neighbourhoods. He served a short assistantship at Larbert nr Falkirk before embarking on the pastorate of St Peter’s Dundee in 1836, in a fast-expanding industrial area. At first this seemed an unlikely appointment for a cultured and well-to-do middle-class academic whose health was not good. But he was innovative from the start, building a leadership team, making evangelism a priority and aiming for attractive music and good singing, starting psalmody classes to that end.

His preaching was in plain speech, rich in illustration, and his sermons could last for 20 minutes or 90. He opened a church library, was an active visitor in the parish, and the building seating over 1000 was often filled for Thursday evening Bible-studies. The heart of this ministry was his own rich and disciplined prayer-life, and his daily calendar for reading the Bible in a year (the OT once, NT and Pss twice) is still in wide use. He was specially concerned for the Jewish people, and in 1839 spent 6 months in Palestine with 3 other CofS ministers including Andrew Bonar, whose account coauthored with RMM (his only published book) became a bestseller. One fruit of the visit was a hymn beginning, ‘How pleasant is thy deep blue wave,/ O sea of Galilee…’. In his absence, revival came to St Peter’s while it was in the temporary care of Wm Chalmers Burns. M’Cheyne returned to find a church building packed every night, hundreds being converted (his own cautious estimate was 700), and the town a centre of national but not always welcome attention in the press. For the remaining 4 years of his life, he travelled to other Scottish towns to encourage genuine spiritual renewal. In 1843 he was appointed a commissioner to the General Assembly which was to lead to the Disruption and the foundation of the Free Ch of Scotland, but while parish visiting he contracted typhus and died at the age of 29. The funeral service drew some 6000 mourners. In 1844 his friend Andrew Bonar wrote The Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, a book which became a spiritual classic and is still in print more than 160 years later. Other biographies came from J C Smith (1910) and Alexander Smellie (1913). RMM’s verse runs to a little over 50 poems and hymns, 2 of the latter coming into wide use among evangelicals. No.973.