I heard the voice of Jesus say 

The author of this hymn, Horatius Bonar (1808-1889), Edinburgh born and educated, was ordained, like many of his ancestors, in the Church of Scotland.  Four years after his ordination he sided with the evangelicals in the “Great Disruption” of 1843, leaving the Kirk for the Free Church of Scotland. In 1883 he was Moderator of the Free Church General Assembly.  Bonar was a noted and popular preacher and writer as well as a hymnodist.  He published eleven volumes of hymns.  A staunch pre-millenarian, he wrote Prophetical Landmarks in 1847 and edited The Quarterly Journal of Prophecy. He wrote “I heard the voice of Jesus say” around 1845 and published it, without music, in 1850 in Hymns Original and Selected, and later in Hymns of Faith and Hope (1857).  In both collections the hymn is preceded by John 1:16: " Of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace" (KJV). Each of the three stanzas starts with words spoken by Jesus in the gospels: Matthew 11:28-30; John 4:10–14; John 8:12.  And the second half of each stanza comprises the human response to Jesus’ words.  Taken together, the three stanzas move from the past through the present and look to the future.

 

Ironically, Bonar’s hymn would not have been sung in his churches, since the Free Church, like the Kirk, allowed the singing of Psalm paraphrases only.  But children in Sunday School could sing other things, and Bonar used a tune by the  German composer Friedrich Kirmair (1770-1814) for this hymn in the Sunday School.  In 1868 John Bacchus Dykes wrote the hymn tune “Vox dilecti” (the Voice of the Beloved) for Bonar’s hymn for the publication of Hymns Ancient and Modern.  Dykes takes the structure of Bonar’s stanzas as the structure of his tune, setting the first half—the words of Jesus—in a minor key and the second half—the speaker’s response—in the major.  Ralph Vaughan Williams chose the traditional tune “Kingsfold” for the 1906 English Hymnal and that remains a frequently-used tune.  It is the tune we sing.  Kingsfold is the name of a tiny hamlet near Horsham in Sussex where in 1904 the composer heard a local singing the ballad “The Murder of Maria Martin” to this tune.