Eternal light! Eternal light!

Thomas Binney is one of those hymnwriters who achieves greatness by a single enduring text, included in many books of all church traditions. Recalling the first NT Letter of John, it leads us from eternal light to eternal love, via the atonement and the personal ‘energies’ of the Holy Spirit: a truly Trinitarian hymn, and one of wonder, praise and assurance. The author said of it in 1866, ‘It was written about forty years ago, and was set to music and published by Power of The Strand, on behalf of some charitable object’. But in 1856 he had written ‘Composed thirty years ago, while looking up at the sky, one brilliant star-light night … TB, Walworth, August 7th 1856.’ Even this sounds vague set beside the detailed account often given—that he was exhilarated by a view of the sky, never without light, seen from his study window at Newport, Isle of Wight. In his preferred solitude he watched the sun set, the sky darken, the moon and stars appear; he wrote the hymn that evening before going to bed. It was published in the Baptist Psalms and Hymns in 1858, and the next year in the New Congregational Hymn Book. Textual variants come in different hymnals; 1.5 was originally ‘can live and look on thee’; stz 3 had ‘… whose native sphere … before the Ineffable appear, and on my naked spirit bear …’ (PHRW, which includes the hymn under ‘The Gospel Call’, replaces ‘the Ineffable’ with ‘the Holy one’ and consequently changes ‘holiness’ to ‘majesty’ in 5.2); and 5.3 read ‘the sons of ignorance …’ But ‘Man’ has been retained in stz 4, as in other hymns where it seemed important to include the human race rather than merely an ambiguous ‘us’. Erik Routley, Donald Davie, and J R Watson are among the many warm admirers of this masterpiece of writing, and have commented on it at large in their major hymn studies. See also The Expository Times of April 2001.

The tune, however, is another matter! Henry Morley’s NEWCASTLE (arranged here by Linda Mawson for Praise Trust) has enjoyed wide popularity since its appearance in the 1877 London Tune Book, whose editor Edwin J Moss set it to these words. Many other tunes have been composed for or set to it; editors have suggested that each stz needs a different musical treatment (cf 776?). It has been sung to two different tunes at one time, not quite alternating, but what works effectively at a conference or from a choir may only confuse a congregation.

b Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1798, d Upper Clapton, Hackney, Middx (NE London) 1874. Raised in a Presbyterian home, he was educated locally before serving a 7-year bookselling apprenticeship which required work for 12–15 hrs a day. He studied and loved English literature (Milton, Johnson, Tennyson—‘my great work was English’) and with help from a Presbyterian minister, Lat and Gk. He trained for the Congregational ministry at Coward Coll at Wymondley, Herts, and pastored the ‘New Meeting’ in Bedford for a year. He moved to the Congregational Ch at Newport, Isle of Wight; and in 1829, almost unknown, was appointed to the King’s Weigh House Chapel at Eastcheap in the City of London. This had a distinguished history of dissent; in 1834 it moved to a new and much larger home in Fish St Hill. From then on Binney discarded his ministerial gown; a move he later regretted, comparing an ungowned preacher to ‘an auctioneer going up into his box!’. His preaching included much argument, appealing to reason in lengthy sentences, but it made its mark in delivery as being homely rather than academic, appealing especially to the crowds of young men who came to hear him. Like Spurgeon he had the doubtful honour of having his sermons shamelessly preached by others. He did not rant; but he was noted for his eccentric asides and an extraordinarily riveting ‘pulpit whisper’. Observers noted his imposing presence, majestic brow, and nervous fingers running through his hair or tapping the pulpit as if dealing with the type in his old printing office. In doctrine he was Calvinistic, championing Scripture, orthodoxy and propitiation but growing impatient with the cruder explanations of substitution; along with atheism, he ridiculed fashionable liberalism. He also moved towards a more liturgical form of service, loving the Psalms, heartfelt in prayer, urging the need for better music in the church and ‘to introduce poetry and order and beauty into Congregational [cap.C] worship’ (Routley). Proud of his Northumbrian roots, he could be surprisingly irritable, embarrassingly rude, and also immensely kind. While no great traveller compared with some, he did reach both N America and Australia; the latter visit in 1857 promoted the founding of the Colonial Missionary Soc, and his stand for the needs and rights of aboriginal Australians through the Aborigines’ Protection Society. He supported not merely assistance, but (in advance of many) ‘The Duty of the Mother Country to the Aborigines’. He received an Hon LL.D from the Univ of Aberdeen.

As well as a handful of hymns, he wrote other verse (being fond of sonnets, serious or not), a great many pamphlets (‘tracts’) and over 50 books including biographies, works on education and Christian ministry, an influential biblical and practical study The Service of Song in the House of the Lord (1849), a volume called Money (1864), and his most successful Is it possible to make the best of both worlds? (1853). He was impatient with and often scornful of the established church which was ‘a great national evil’ and ‘damned more souls than it saved’—assertions which were often used against him. Also much quoted was his 1834 sermon on ‘Dissent, not Schism’. But he said ‘I am a Dissenter because I am a Catholic…I oppose Establishments because I am not a Sectarian’; on these grounds he was the object of some highly personal printed attacks which he returned in kind. He was latterly dubbed ‘the great Dissenting Bishop’, ‘Archbishop of Congregationalism’ or ‘Patriarch of modern Nonconformity’. In 1845 he chaired the Congregational Union, and retired in 1869. The liberal Dean Stanley of Westminster shared in his funeral service; in 1874 the Free Ch hymnwriter E Paxton Hood (qv) wrote a hard-hitting, stylish and snappilytitled biography, Thomas Binney: his Mind, Life and Opinions, Doctrinal, Denominational, Devotional and Practical. Interspersed with Anecdotes, Descriptions, and Criticisms; and headed with 1 Cor 15:10–11. Binney had the rare privilege of reading his own obituary, printed in error a month before he died, and was buried in N London’s Abney Park Cemetery. Hood called him ‘one of the few men made immortal by a single hymn’ (though several such writers appear in our list); the hymn resembles his preaching, which the same writer compared to ‘a path of light…the sun struggling through clouds’. No.243.