The Lord will come and not be slow for August 10 2025

This hymn is a selection of verses from psalm translations made by the poet John Milton and published as Nine of the Psalms done into Metre in 1648.  It was James Martineau (1805-1900) who first published the selection, using three stanzas in A Collection of Hymns for Christian Worship (1831) and then five stanzas in Hymns for the Christian Church and Home (1840). Of Huguenot descent, Martineau was educated in Norwich Grammar School and the Unitarian Manchester College, where he later became Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy and Political Economy (then named Manchester New College and now Harris Manchester College in Oxford University).   Martineau was a Unitarian minister in Dublin, Liverpool and Manchester before becoming a professor and then Principal of the college.

 

To create this hymn Martineau used verses from Milton’s translations of 82, 85 and 86.  Verse one is Milton’s 85:13, with the two halves reversed; verse two is 85:11; verse three is 82:8; and verses four and five are 86:9 and 86:10.  Martineau also adapted Milton’s versification of psalm 88 (How lovely are thy dwellings fair) as a hymn, and he wrote several original hymns himself.

 

This text has been set to several tunes, including “St Magnus,” “York,” and “St Stephen” (which is sometimes called “Newington in Scotland).  We sing St Stephen, by William Jones (1726-1800), which was written specifically for these words and published in 1789 in Jones’ Church Piec­es for the Or­gan with Four An­thems in Score.  Jones, educated at the Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, was ordained to the priesthood in 1751and after several posts, took a permanent living in Nayland, Suffolk.  From 1777 he was chaplain to the Bishop of Norwich.  A polymath, Jones wrote on theology, ecclesiology, the Bible,  science, and music, as well as composing.