I love you, O Lord, you alone

Not many Psalms are included twice in Scripture. In the ‘hour of his highest prosperity and happiness, David composed this magnificent hymn of thanksgiving’ (Kirkpatrick). In response to a request for more hymns of the heart, not just the mind, Christopher Idle wrote this version while rector of Limehouse in 1977—a frankly Christian treatment of an ancient and mighty Psalm (most of which is found in 2 Samuel 22) defying Donald Davie’s characteristic view that ‘it can hardly be Christianized’. Isaac Watts seems a good model: ‘Thy love to saints in Christ their Head …’ etc; Doddridge’s extract has ‘Legions of foes beset me round,/ while marching o’er this dangerous ground … Now let the fiercest foes assail,/ their darts I count as rattling hail’. Today we sing in aspiration and fellowship, with apocalyptic language heightening the believer’s experience, rather than in merely individual testimony. Such was the spirit of Scheffler’s Thee will I love, my Strength, my Tower, as prompted by the Psalm, translated by J Wesley (742), and Lyte’s Whom should we love like thee as in Congregational Praise (1951) and CH. Though written with TREWEN in mind, CMI‘s version soon found a natural partner in David Peacock’s tune JANE, which he composed for this text while Director of Music at Clarendon School. It is named after his wife; words and music were launched together in HTC. The tune has an unusual modulation (but cf 19A following) and its opening phrase returns an octave higher at the end of each stz. Jane Peacock died, aged 46, in 1997, and this Psalm version was sung at her funeral service at Upton Vale Baptist Church in Torquay.

b Bromley, Kent 1938. Eltham Coll, St Peter’s Coll Oxford (BA, English), Clifton Theol Coll Bristol; ordained in 1965 to a Barrow-in-Furness curacy. He spent 30 years in CofE parish ministry, some in rural Suffolk, mainly in inner London (Peckham, Poplar and Limehouse). Author of over 300 hymn texts, mainly Scripture based, collected in Light upon the River (1998) and Walking by the River (2008), Trees along the River (2018), and now appearing in some 300 books and other publications; see also the dedication of EP1 (p3) to his late wife Marjorie. He served on 5 editorial groups from Psalm Praise (1973) to Praise!; his writing includes ‘Grove’ booklets Hymns in Today’s Language (1982) and Real Hymns, Real Hymn Books (2000), and The Word we preach, the words we sing (Reform, 1998). He edited the quarterly News of Hymnody for 10 years, and briefly the Bulletin of the Hymn Society, on whose committee he served at various times between 1984 and 2006; and addressed British and American Hymn Socs. Until 1996 he often exchanged draft texts with Michael Perry (qv) for mutual criticism and encouragement. From 1995 he was engaged in educational work and writing from home in Peckham, SE London, until retirement in 2003; following his return to Bromley after a gap of 40 years, he has attended Holy Trinity Ch Bromley Common and Hayes Lane Baptist Ch. Owing much to the Proclamation Trust, he also belongs to the Anglican societies Crosslinks and Reform, together with CND and the Christian pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. A former governor of 4 primary schools, he has also written songs for school assemblies set to familiar tunes, and (in 2004) Grandpa’s Amazing Poems and Awful Pictures. His bungalow is smoke-free, alcohol-free, car-free, gun-free and TV-free. Nos.13, 18, 21, 23A, 24B, 27B, 28, 31, 35, 36, 37, 48, 50, 68, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 85, 89, 92, 95, 102, 108, 109, 114, 118, 119A, 121A, 125, 128, 131, 145B, 157, 176, 177, 193*, 313*, 333, 339, 388, 392, 420, 428, 450, 451, 463, 478, 506, 514, 537, 548, 551, 572, 594, 597, 620, 621, 622, 636, 668, 669, 693, 747, 763, 819, 914, 917, 920, 945, 954, 956, 968, 976, 1003, 1012, 1084, 1098, 1138, 1151, 1158, 1159, 1178, 1179, 1181, 1201, 1203, 1204, 1205, 1209, 1210, 1211, 1212, 1221, 1227, 1236, 1237, 1244, 1247, 5017, 5018, 5019, 5020.