Letter From America: Tell Me The Stories Of Jesus
Ronnie Bray tells of the hymns that moved him deeply when he was a boy – and indeed they still do so.
For more of Ronnie’s delightful words please click on Letter From America in the menu on this page.
As a child and young lad I attended Brunswick Street Methodist Church in Huddersfield, and enjoyed my association from being very young up until halfway through my fourteenth year. Harvest Festivals at Brunswick Street were memorable affairs, but equally memorable was the polished woodwork that sang through the beautiful architecture of its chapel and gallery.
In later years I attended Sunday evening services more and enjoyed the organ and the enthusiastic singing that lifted my soul in ways I could neither define nor express. Between Brunswick Street, as the chapel was affectionately known, and the morning assemblies of Spring Grove School, sacred music was poured into my soul, enriching it by thrills and passions it evoked, causing me to hunger for more.
Although I became familiar with multitudes of words and tunes from ‘Ancient and Modern,’ three hymns stood out from them all. Two were regularly sung at school, and the third at Sunday School.
‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ evinced the raw power of divine majesty and power even as I considered it theologically unsound. In today’s Christian Age when many have abandoned God the Father in favour of his Son Jesus Christ, the hymn serves to remind us that whatever happens, God is above all, over all. This was of great comfort to me as a child growing up in the War Years when the whole of the world seemed engaged in a Life or death struggle against the powers of darkness.
Its words were written by Reverend Reginald Heber when he was the Vicar of Hodnet in Shropshire. The powerful music, ‘Nicea,’ was composed by John B Dykes. The marriage of poesy and tune combined in this great hymn to stir my soul. I did not understand it, but it was a hint of something ‘other’ that was as real and tangible as the hewn rocks that were built into the walls of the houses of old Huddersfield.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessèd Trinity!
Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,
Who was, and is, and evermore shall be.
Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide Thee,
Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see;
Only Thou art holy; there is none beside Thee,
Perfect in power, in love, and purity.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise Thy Name, in earth, and sky, and sea;
Holy, holy, holy; merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessèd Trinity!
The second school hymn brought terror in its train. Not a terror for myself, but a sense of the awfulness that sailors face at sea, whether from storm and tempest, or from death dealing bombardment by sea and air. If I remember it or hear it now, I relive the sense of dread and foreboding it instilled into my heart and mind as I stood with my fellows on the stepped benches of my alma mater.
The hymn is sung on ships of the Royal Navy, and other nations have adopted it as a sailor’s anthem. William Whiting wrote it for one of his students who was about to sail to America, and was set to music by John B Dykes, the year before it was published in Hymns Ancient and Modern.
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bid’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
O Christ! Whose voice the waters heard
And hushed their raging at Thy Word,
Who walked on the foaming deep,
And calm amidst its rage didst sleep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
Most Holy Spirit! Who didst brood
Upon the chaos dark and rude,
And bid its angry tumult cease,
And give, for wild confusion, peace;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!
O Trinity of love and power!
Our family shield in danger’s hour;
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect us wheresoe’er we go;
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.
But neither of these stirring hymns of angst and alarm tops the list of favourites of my boyhood days. That honour goes to a sweet hymn whose simple message reached into my heart with its words and music to touch whatever it was inside me that was tuned to a timeless sense of spiritual realities and woke me to experience the love of a Heavenly Father. That place is reserved for a down-to-earth child’s view of a figure from the past who reaches us still. The words were written by William H. Parker, and were set to music by Frederick A. Challinor.
Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to hear;
Things I would ask him to tell me if he were here:
Scenes by the wayside, tales of the sea,
Stories of Jesus, tell them to me.
First let me hear how the children stood round his knee,
And I shall fancy his blessing resting on me;
Words full of kindness, deeds full of grace,
All in the lovelight of Jesus' face.
Tell me, in accents of wonder, how rolled the sea,
Tossing the boat in a tempest on Galilee;
And how the Maker, ready and kind,
Chided the billows, and hushed the wind.
Into the city I’d follow the children’s band,
Waving a branch of the palm tree high in my hand.
One of His heralds, yes, I would sing
Loudest hosannas, “Jesus is King!”
Show me that scene in the garden, of bitter pain.
Show me the cross where my Saviour for me was slain.
Sad ones or bright ones, so that they be
Stories of Jesus, tell them to me.
This children’s hymn still moves me as it did sixty years ago when I sat among Methodists and felt the wonder of the life of Jesus as it was recounted by dedicated teachers. I knew that Jesus was special; moreover, I was convinced by this hymn that he was especially special to children, and I longed to see him.
By the time I was fifteen I had moved on from the Methodists, spurred by an unkindness that I vowed as a teacher never to emulate. Mormonism introduced me to many new hymns. Hymns that for the more part had been produced in the searing furnaces of persecution and misunderstanding, but I was delighted to find that “Tell Me The Stories Of Jesus” was in the Latter-day Saint Children’s Hymnal.
I have other favourites now; far too many to recount. As long as I remain in mortality I will always remember the part these three hymns of yesteryear contributed to my religious and spiritual endowment. As a child in a dysfunctional family, the music of “Tell Me The Stories Of Jesus,” was the nearest thing to love I felt. Even now it has the power to move me to tears, and I hope it always will.
Such is the power of this hymn, and so profoundly does it dwell in my soul, that at the last it is to be employed as substantiation of my demise by this method: When I am in my coffin laid, before the lid is fixed firm, sing this hymn close by, and if you detect a teardrop glister out the corner of my eye, I am not gone.
Copyright © 2006 Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
