Praise, O praise our God and King

Henry W. Baker (1821-1877) wrote this hymn—a revision of the 15-year-old John Milton’s translation/paraphrase of psalm 136–-for the first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861), where it is in the section of harvest hymns.  Baker, who was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, had been Vicar of Monkland in Herefordshire since 1851 and had inherited his father’s baronetcy in 1859.  He became the leader of the group of priests later known as “the Proprietors,” who produced A&M.  He finds his inspiration for this hymn in the 25th verse of  Milton’s psalm: “All living creatures he doth feed,  /And with full hand supplies their need.”  The hymn becomes, then, in Baker’s version, a harvest hymn.  He keeps Milton’s verses 8 and 9, on the sun and moon, now seen with rain and the fruitful earth as part of God’s provision of the “harvest store.”  Food becomes a metaphor for the “richer Food” of eternal life in Baker’s penultimate stanza. 

 

A part of Milton’s translation remains in many hymnals as “Let us with a gladsome mind.”

 

Several tunes have been associated with this text, but the most common one is “Monkland,” introduced to Baker by John Wilkes (1823–1882), organist at the parish church in Monkland, Herefordshire, where Baker was vicar from 1851 until his death.  Wilkes was formerly thought to have been the composer of the tune, but he actually had it from John Lees’ Hymn Tunes of the United Brethren (1824).  Lees, in turn, took the tune from the composer John Antes (1740-1812), a U.S. born Moravian missionary (and watchmaker and instrument maker) who studied in Germany and then spent a decade in Egypt.  He returned to Germany in 1781 and in 1785 was sent to Fulneck, England.  Most of his music was composed during his time in Fulneck.  Antes based his tune on a tune in the German hymnal Geistreiches Gesangbuch of Johann Freylinghausen (1704).