O Jesus I have promised

This confirmation hymn was written in 1866 by John Ernest Bode (1816-1874).  Bode was educated at both Eton and Charterhouse, and then went up to Christ Church College, Oxford (BA 1837, MA 1840).  Ordained deacon in 1840 and priest in 1841, he was a Vicar in Oxfordshire for 13 years and then in Cambridgeshire for 14 years.  Bode was nominated for the Oxford Professorship of Poetry, but lost to Matthew Arnold.  He gave the prestigious Bampton Lectures ("for the exposition and defense of the Christian faith") in Oxford in 1855.  Bode published two volumes of poetry and a volume of Hymns from the Gospel of the Day for each Sunday and Festivals of our Lord (1860).  This hymn was written for the confirmations of his two sons and his daughter (Alice Mary Bode, who also wrote hymns as an adult).  It was first published as a leaflet by the SPCK in 1868, and later in two SPCK hymn books.  It was in the second edition of A&M (1875).  Bode’s original text had six stanzas, but most modern hymn books omit either one or two.

 

The hymn was probably first sung to “Angel’s Story” by Arthur Henry Mann (Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge, 1876-1929), composed in 1881 for a different hymn.  [Apparently composed for “I love to hear the story/Which angel voices tell” by an American Methodist, Emily Huntington Miller, an associate editor of The Ladies’ Home Journal and a leader of the Temperance movement.]  In Songs of Praise (1931) Dearmer, Shaw and Vaughan Williams offer three settings for Bode’s hymn: two early German tunes, Komm, Seele, by J.W. Franck (1681) and Bremen, adapted from a tune in a hymnbook compiled by Johan Störl in 1710, and “Thornbury,” composed by Basil Harwood in 1898 for “Thy hand, O God, hast guided,” by E.H. Plumtre.  In later hymn books Thornbury continues to be used often, along with William Harold Ferguson’s Wolvercote.

 

Basil Harwood (1859-1949) was educated at the Charterhouse School and then at Trinity College, Oxford.  Brought up as a Quaker by his mother, he became an Anglican after his father’s second marriage.  He graduated BMus in 1880 and became organist of St Barnabas, Pimlico in 1883, Ely Cathedral in 1887, snd Christ Church, Oxford, in 1892.  He retired early from Christ Church in 1909 in order to manage his family’s estate in Gloucestershire (including Thornbury).

 

William Ferguson (1874-1950), who had been a pupil and a  chorister in the Magdalen College School, Oxford, took his degree from Keble College in 1896.  He taught in St Edward’s School in North Oxford for three years and then in Bilton Grange, Rugby.  In 1901 he entered Cuddesdon Theological College (Oxford, now Ripon College Cuddesdon) and was ordained deacon in 1902.  In the same year he was appointed assistant master, chaplain, organist and director of chapel music at Lancing College in West Sussex; he was ordained to the priesthood in 1903 and continued at Lancing until 1913, when he was appointed Warden (Headmaster) of St Edward’s.  After 12 years he became Warden of St Peter’s College, Radley, Abingdon, and after another 12 years, Canon and Precentor of Salisbury Cathedral.  During his time as Warden of St Edward’s, Ferguson served, with Geoffrey Shaw, as musical co-editor of the second edition of The Public School Hymn Book (1919), which contained a number of his hymns, including “Wolvercote,” written at Lancing.  The hymn is named for what was then a small village near St Edward’s.