Where high the heavenly temple stands

A brief section of 5 hymns follows closely on, and overlaps with, the one before, but more specifically treats of Christ’s ‘priesthood and intercession’. Like Henry Kirke White (886), Michael Bruce survived his 21st birthday by only a matter of months. Both men, from very different backgrounds, seem to have exhausted themselves by the rigour of their studies. But each author has provided one enduring hymn, not without controversy, as well as other verse; with 564, two may be claimed for Bruce, the earlier of them. His hymn about Christ our great high priest is based unmistakably on Hebrews 4:14–16. Like others, it was written for a singing class at his home village of Kinnesswood in Kinrossshire, probably before he turned 20. One form of the text (in LMD) emerged in the Poems edited by his younger friend John Logan in 1781, some years after Bruce’s death, and after Logan’s inadequate edition of Poems on Several Occasions by Michael Bruce in 1770. But the long and murky dispute on authorship between Bruce’s parents and Logan, who had borrowed his deceased friend’s handwritten manuscript book from them but not returned it, takes up nearly 2 pages of Julian’s Dictionary (under ‘Bruce, Michael’ immediately followed by ‘Logan, John’.) Julian gives the verdict decisively to Bruce in terms of both authorship and quality of writing; no-one since then seems to have overturned that view. The hymn as we know it also has much in common with 505. Stz 2 began ‘He who for man their surety stood’; 3.2 read ‘he bends on earth …’ and 5.1, ‘In every pang …’ (For other texts from comparatively youthful authors, see notes to 121B and 911.)

LUTHER’S CHANT (distinct from LUTHER’S HYMN, and unconnected with the German Reformer) is often known as CASTLE STREET. H C (later Charles) Zeuner included it in his Boston, USA, collection The American Harp (c1850?), among what he called ‘hymn chants’. CH includes the tune 3 times, but not for this hymn which is set there to WARRINGTON, named here as an alternative, 447.

b Kinnesswood, Portmoak, Kinross 1746, d Kinnesswood 1767. The son of Alexander Bruce, a Scottish weaver who was an elder of the seceding church whose founder Ebenezer Erskine had ministered at Portmoak 1703–29. After schooling at Kinnesswood in which he showed early brilliance and spiritual understanding, Michael studied at the Univ of Edinburgh from 1762 with a view to ordination, supporting himself by school-teaching in the summer months at Gairney Bridge and For(r)est Mill nr Alloa. But his health was never robust; his theological study at Kinross was cut short, and he succumbed to TB at the age of 21. He had already written several hymns and other verse for the singing class in his home town of Kinnesswood, some of which (like Elegy of Spring, in the year of his death) show a premonition of tragedy. The disputed authorship of some of his poems when they appeared in print some years later is mentioned in the notes to the one hymn which has endured, and which appears in some two dozen current books. The editor John Logan (qv) claimed Bruce’s work as his own, but seems to have done no more than tidy their final shape. See the fuller notes in Julian and (eg) the Irish Companion to Church Hymnal, 2005. Another hymn, O happy is the man who hears, also reached Scottish, Irish and N American collections until the early 20th c. He has been dubbed ‘Loch Leven’s gentle poet’ from his birthplace at the foot of the Lomond hills; he has a brief chapter in Christian Hymn-writers (1982) by Elsie Houghton, who notes that his monument in Portmoak churchyard was erected by the minister Dr Mackelvie, paid for from the sales of his edition of Bruce’s poems. Dr Mackelvie and David Arnot, the father of MB’s school friend William who died at an even younger age, were his greatest encouragers. No.501, 564.