2020 06 11
Canon Jim Woolley
“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty”
This past Sunday, Trinity Sunday we heard, “sang” in the English Zoom service the hymn “Holy, Holy. Holy, Lord God Almighty. This hymn is found in almost all hymn books. In Common Praise, as with many other hymn books, it is the first hymn. The hymn is based on a free paraphrase of Revelation 4:8-11.
The hymn was written by Reginald Heber, born on August 21, 1783 in England. His father was an Anglican priest and Heber himself, a graduate of Oxford University, was ordained an Anglican priest in 13
1807. Heber was approached twice to be the bishop of Calcutta and each time he refused. On the 3rd occasion, against the advice of friends, he accepted. When he reached India in 1823 he soon discovered that his diocese covered the whole of British India and included a lot of travel. He was considered a wise and energetic bishop. The strain of being the bishop was too much for him and he died suddenly on April 3, 1826 at the age of 43.
He was one of the first hymn writers to either write or gather hymns that reflected the themes of the Epistles and Gospel throughout the year. His hymns began appearing in 1811. His first collection of hymns was truned down by the Archbishop of Canterbury but was published by his widow and accepted by the Archbishop a year following his death.
The tune Nicaea, composed by John Dykes, accompanied the hymn when it was published in the hymn book entitled Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1861. The tune was named after Nicaea, the city in Asia Minor where the first general council of the Christian Church, convened by Constantine in 325, took place. At this Council the doctrine of the Trinity as expressed in the Nicene Creed was formulated.
Jim