Over the summer season we’re repeating some articles from The Midweek Hymn sequence. This was first revealed on January 23, 2019.
IF ever a piece resulted from divine inspiration, it’s the hymn O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go, requested by TCW reader ‘Starshiptrooper’.
It was written by George Matheson, a Church of Scotland minister, and by his personal account it took 5 minutes and ‘got here like a dayspring from on excessive’.
Matheson was born in Glasgow in 1842, the second eldest of eight youngsters of a service provider and his spouse, a proficient beginner musician. His sight began to fail in early childhood however his elder sister Jane taught him to learn and later he dictated his college essays to her. He excelled academically and went to Glasgow College to review classics, logic and philosophy. His youthful sisters Margaret and Ellen discovered Hebrew, Latin and Greek in order that they might learn to him and assist his research.
He graduated with top quality honours when he was solely 19 however by this time he was virtually fully blind. He had fallen in love with a fellow pupil and so they grew to become engaged, however she broke it off, saying she couldn’t face life with a blind man.
Matheson started his ministry in 1868 at Innellan, on the Argyll coast close to Dunoon. His sister Jane continued to assist him, and was a fantastic assist and companion. Matheson wrote quite a few profitable books on non secular issues, and Queen Victoria invited him to evangelise at Balmoral. She organized for the sermon, on the persistence of Job, to be revealed.
When Matheson was 40, his youthful sister Margaret married.
Later he recorded: ‘My hymn was composed within the manse of Innellan on the night of the sixth of June, 1882, after I was 40 years of age. I used to be alone within the manse at the moment. It was the night time of my sister’s marriage, and the remainder of the household have been staying in a single day in Glasgow. One thing occurred to me, which was recognized solely to myself, and which triggered me probably the most extreme psychological struggling.
‘The hymn was the fruit of that struggling. It was the quickest bit of labor I ever did in my life. I had the impression of getting it dictated to me by some inward voice somewhat than of working it out myself. I’m fairly certain that the entire work was accomplished in 5 minutes, and equally certain that it by no means acquired at my arms any retouching or correction.
‘I’ve no pure present of rhythm. All the opposite verses I’ve ever written are manufactured articles; this got here like a dayspring from on excessive.’
Whereas he by no means specified the reason for ‘probably the most extreme psychological struggling’ it’s cheap to take a position that the marriage would have prompted him to think about the fiancée who abandoned him and what might need been.
These are the phrases he wrote:
1 O Love that won’t let me go,
I relaxation my weary soul in thee.
I give thee again the life I owe,
that in thine ocean depths its stream
could richer, fuller be.
2 O Mild that follows all my means,
I yield my flick’ring torch to thee.
My coronary heart restores its borrowed ray,
that in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
could brighter, fairer be.
3 O Pleasure that seekest me via ache,
I can not shut my coronary heart to thee.
I climb the rainbow via the rain,
and really feel the promise shouldn’t be useless,
that morn shall tearless be.
4 O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee.
I lay in mud, life’s glory useless,
and from the bottom there blossoms crimson,
life that shall limitless be.
In actual fact there was one subsequent change to the phrases. The Hymnal Committee of the Church of Scotland requested him to vary ‘I climb the rainbow’ within the third verse to ‘I hint’. (I hope that within the fourth verse he makes use of ‘lay’ up to now tense, though it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, not as an incorrect current tense.)
In 1886 Matheson grew to become minister of St Bernard’s Parish Church in Edinburgh, which at the moment had one of many largest congregations in Scotland, and his renown continued to unfold. He by no means married, and shared a house together with his devoted sister Jane. He died quickly after a stroke in 1906 on the age of 64 and is buried within the Glasgow Necropolis.
Fittingly, the melody by Albert L Peace (1844-1912) was additionally written in a short time. Peace was born in Huddersfield and was a toddler prodigy, changing into organist on the parish church in close by Holmfirth when he was solely 9. He gained a level in music at Oxford and was organist at Glasgow Cathedral from 1879 to 1897. The Scottish Hymnal Committee invited him to set Matheson’s phrases to music and he carried the verses with him, prepared for inspiration to strike. He was sitting on a seaside on the Isle of Arran studying the phrases when the melody got here into his thoughts. He stated later that ‘the ink of the primary be aware was hardly dry after I had completed the tune’. He known as it St Margaret, after a queen of Scotland who was a benefactress to the church. Peace later grew to become organist at St. George’s Corridor in Liverpool, then considered the premier submit in organ enjoying.
Matheson at all times modestly attributed the recognition of his hymn to Peace’s tune.
I favored this efficiency better of the choice on YouTube.
I’m a sucker for brass bands and I like this model, although I’ve failed to seek out out something about Gospel Brass.
An association by the tenor singer David Phelps appears to be in style. Right here it’s in a rehearsal efficiency by the Gaither Vocal Band, of which Phelps is an intermittent member. He’s the one within the verify shirt.
Lastly, here’s a pleasant efficiency of one other setting, revealed in 2002 by artist Christopher Miner, from three proficient sisters known as Lanie, Natalie and Carrie Clauson. Do keep it up until the tip.
