I heard the voice of Jesus say

with
[F.J. Kirmair]
VOX DILECTI
KINGSFOLD
ROWAN TREE
[Kevin Twit]

I. Text: Composition & Manuscript

In 1904, Horatius N. Bonar, son of hymn writer Horatius Bonar (1808–1889), published a collected edition of his father’s hymns, including one of his most well known, “I heard the voice of Jesus say.” In the preface, he included the following explanation of the hymn’s appearance in one of his father’s manuscript notebooks:

In 1845, he published a neatly-bound little collection of three hundred hymns by various authors, called The Bible Hymn-Book. Some sixteen or seventeen of his own pieces were included in it, but the authorship of none of them (or indeed of any in the book) was indicated; and no name appeared on the title-page or in the preface, which merely stated very briefly that the volume was “designed both for general use and for Sabbath schools.” Among the hymns now associated with the name Bonar which appeared in print for the first time were “This is not my place of resting,” “All that I was, my sin, my guilt,” and “The Church has waited long.”

Somewhere about this time, he wrote the very familiar hymn, “I heard the voice of Jesus say,” though he did not publish it until several years had passed. In the manuscript book it occupies the next page to “The Church has waited long.” Though there are several interlineations and alternative readings in this rough pencil draft, a study of it shows that before the author laid it aside, the hymn as we now know it was almost complete.

The lines which differ are only (1) “The Living Water freely take” instead of “The Living Water, thirsty one,” and (2) “Look unto Me, thy day shall break, / And all thy path be bright,” instead of “Look unto Me, thy morn shall rise, / And all thy day be bright.” Once “and” is changed into “my” and “the” into “this,” but otherwise the published hymn is the same as the first pencilled version of it. The accompanying facsimile of the page of the notebook will help to explain these remarks.[1]

Another image of the same manuscript was made especially for Louis Benson’s Studies of Familiar Hymns, Second Series (1923 | Archive.org), p. 214, at a smaller scale.

II. Text: Publication

The hymn is often reported to have been printed in Hymns Original and Selected, dated 1846, but no such copy is known to survive. The 1846 date was presented especially by John Julian (1892) in his article “I heard the voice of Jesus say” at page 556, and in the biographical article “Horatius Bonar” at page 161, written by Bonar’s nephew, Rev. James Bonar of Greenock. But this contradicts the account of the younger Horatius, who said his father “did not publish it until several years had passed,” that is, several years after 1845. Other historians before Julian dated the collection at 1850, including George A. Crawford & Jacob A. Eberle (1876), and Edwin Hatfield (1884). One surviving edition dated 1850 is housed at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Therefore, this editor believes the 1846 date is an error.

In the 1850 printing (Fig. 2), the hymn appeared in 3 stanzas of 8 lines, without music, headed “Of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace,” John 1:16.

The hymn also appeared in the First Series of Hymns of Faith and Hope (1857 | Fig. 3) under the title “The Voice from Galilee.”

In his brief preface to the 1857 collection, Bonar expressed a desire for his hymns to be accessible to as many people as possible:

They belong to no church or sect. They are not the expressions of one man’s or one party’s faith and hope but are meant to speak what may be thought and spoken by all whom the Church’s ancient faith and hope are dear.

III. Text: Background & Analysis

When Bonar wrote this hymn circa 1845, he was only a couple of years removed (1843) from changing the association of his North Church in Kelso to being affiliated with the Free Church of Scotland. But the Free Church, like the Church of Scotland, only practiced the singing of Psalm paraphrases in congregational worship, except for a few dozen Scripture-based hymns printed in the Scottish Translations and Paraphrases (1745–1781). The Free Church did not sanction a hymnal until The Scottish Psalmody of 1873, and Bonar’s Edinburgh congregation continued to disallow hymns for many more years; it has been reported that Bonar never heard his hymns sung in Sunday services by his own congregations.

Bonar’s intent for this hymn and others from this time period was to supply simple, understandable hymns for his church’s Sunday school, and he often had them printed on leaflets with tunes he chose. The hymn has a simple structure, being a series of three statements made by Jesus, each followed by a personal response.

In approaching the overall substance of Bonar’s hymn, hymnologist Louis Benson offered this summary:

It belongs to the class known as “subjective hymns” or “hymns of inward experience.” Like so many of Bonar’s, it mirrors the life of Christ in the soul. If the writer [Benson] understands it, it pictures human life as a pilgrimage (Bonar seems to have thought of life in no other aspect). The pilgrim has sought far and wide for things unattained. As night comes on he is weary of it all, he hears “The Voice from Galilee,” and heeding it finds rest. But the new peace in the heart must be sustained, and the pilgrim reaches out his hand to take from Christ’s the offered water of life. And thus refreshed he rests in the Lord. At dawn he awakes, at peace but a pilgrim still. It is another day and he must go on—but not to resume the old quest. It is a new day of which Christ is the Light, and a transfigured world through which Christ is the Way. And in that Light and by that Way he will walk “till traveling days are done.”[2]

The first stanza looks to Matthew 11:28–30 (“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” etc.), and the worshiper responds by saying “I came to Jesus as I was.” The second stanza looks to John 4:10–14 (where Christ offers living water to the woman at the well), and the worshiper responds by saying “I came to Jesus and I drank.” The third stanza looks to John 8:12 (“I am the light of the world”), and the worshiper responds by saying “I looked to Jesus and I found,” etc.

Benson, in discussing the overall legacy of Bonar’s hymns, recognized the shifting of attitudes toward Bonar’s style, but he felt this one in particular would be particularly resilient:

It is hard to believe that any changes of atmosphere will affect “I heard the voice of Jesus say.” It adds something even to the beautiful words of Christ: it adds the human response, without which Christ’s words were quite in vain.[3]

IV. Tunes

1. (Friedrich Joseph) Kirmair

Bonar sometimes selected tunes for his hymns in order for them to be sung in his church’s Sunday school. His original choice of tune for this hymn is unknown. When he was editor of The Christian Treasury, he oversaw the insertion of his hymns into multiple volumes, notated and engraved by the company of Colville & Bentley. Starting in 1865 and continuing until 1868, this series of hymn sheets was dubbed The Treasury Hymnal. “The Voice from Galilee” was part of the second series, printed in 1866, set to a variant of a tune composed by Kirmair (probably Friedrich Joseph Kirmair (1770–1814) | Fig. 4). The specific musical reference is not immediately clear. This setting is probably the best representation of how Bonar preferred for his hymn to be sung, or at least it was a setting he personally approved for publication.

This series of hymn settings from The Christian Treasury was published separately in booklets headed The Treasury Hymnal (PDF), then also published in a nicer, bound volume called Selected Hymns by the Rev. Horatius Bonar (Edinburgh: Johnstone, Hunter & Co., n.d. | Archive.org). The bound collection credits David Colville with the harmonizations and accompaniments.

2. VOX DILECTI

In Hymns Ancient & Modern with Appendix (London: William Clowes & Sons, 1868), this text was set to a new tune composed for it by John Bacchus Dykes (1823–1876). Dykes followed the two-part structure of every stanza (statement and response) by crafting a tune starting in G-minor, which then shifts to G-major at the response. He also accommodated Bonar’s false syllabic accent in the first stanza (“Weary”) by starting the sixth phrase on the downbeat (crusis), while also supplying an alternate setting for the other two stanzas, with the sixth phrase beginning on a pickup (anacrusis). Although this accommodation is useful, most hymnals will avoid the issue altogether by fixing the text (as in “So weary, worn, and sad”).

In 1872, Dykes had petitioned Henry Baker for a chance to revise the first three bars, and Baker initially resisted: “But indeed I cannot assent to the new form of ‘I heard the voice of Jesus say.’ I can’t think what has given you such a liking for unison,” he responded.[4] Dykes evidently prevailed, because a new harmonization appeared in the 1875 edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern (Fig. 5b), including a unison incipit.

VOX DILECTI means “voice beloved” (“the beloved voice”). Mennonite scholar Lester Hostetler suggested the first half of the tune represents “the quiet, invitational words of Jesus,” whereas the second half conveys “the glad acceptance of the invitation.”[5] Erik Routley believed the style of the tune “betrays its origin in a choral rather than a congregational technique of composition.”[6] J.R. Watson saw it less as a matter of writing for a particular mode of performance and more as an outgrowth of the sensibilities of the era, saying, “It is a tune which typifies a Victorian sensibility: Dykes increases the plaintiveness of the first half of each verse, and stresses its contrast to the comfort of the second half.” Noting the attempts of musicians to bring about this same kind of mood shift in the tune KINGSFOLD (see below), he asserted, “What has to be effected by the organist [with KINGSFOLD] was achieved by Dykes in VOX DILECTI with his spectacular key change.”[7]

3. KINGSFOLD

Bonar’s text is also commonly sung to KINGSFOLD, starting with this pairing in The English Hymnal (Oxford: University Press, 1906). Here, as with Dykes, musical editor Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) has accommodated the false syllabic stress of “Weary” by providing one setting for the first stanza and an alternate setting for the other two. For a detailed history of KINGSFOLD, see the article on “Dives and Lazarus.”

4. ROWAN TREE

This Scottish folk tune is often erroneously reported as having appeared in R.A. Smith’s The Scotish Minstrel (1821–1824) with a text by Caroline Nairne (1766–1845), “Oh! rowan tree” (and thus the tune name), but whereas some of Nairne’s earliest compositions were printed in that six-volume series, this was not one of them. The earliest appearance of the song in print was in The Vocal Melodies of Scotland, New Ed., vol. 2 (Edinburgh: Paterson & Roy, 1837 | Fig. 7), edited by Finlay Dun & John Thomson. The arrangement is by Dun, and it was conveniently labeled “This melody is now published for the first time.” In this edition, Nairne was not credited with the text. She is reported to have been very secretive about her songwriting pursuits, not wishing to be credited in her lifetime. In one collection from 1887, The Popular Songs of Scotland, the editor said of this song, “Though it was published about 1840, she was not known to be the author till after her death in 1845.”[8] It was credited to her in posthumous collections.

Fig. 7. The Vocal Melodies of Scotland, Complete Edition (Edinburgh: Paterson & Sons, n.d.).

Its use as a hymn tune did not materialize until early in the 21st century, when it was paired with “I heard the voice of Jesus say” in the Church of Scotland’s The Church Hymnary, 4th ed. (2005).

5. Kevin Twit (Indelible Grace)

One modern tune setting in popular use is by Kevin Twit, composed in 1998 for Reformed University Fellowship at Belmont University, and recorded on the premiere album of Indelible Grace (2000). The score was first published online via the Indelible Grace website (Fig. 8) and it was included in the RUF Hymnbook (Franklin, TN: Indelible Grace Music, 2002). Twit’s melody differs from most others in the way the phrases start after the downbeat of the bar, rather than as pickups. Twit offered this explanation of the tune’s genesis:

That is one of the few texts I was asked to set to music specifically. Scotty Smith (my senior pastor at the time) always loved that sweet, simple text. Funny thing is, I don’t think we ever sang my version at church. The text suggested a lullaby type of tune, and on the Indelible Grace recording I used my Tacoma papoose guitar (which sounds like a mandolin) to evoke that tenderness as well. I am always amazed at what Bonar could say with mostly simple, monosyllabic words.[9]

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
17 April 2020
rev. 1 February 2022

Footnotes:

1. H.N. Bonar, Hymns by Horatius Bonar (London: Henry Frowde, 1904), xv–xvii: Google Books

2. Louis F. Benson, “I heard the voice of Jesus say,” Studies of Familiar Hymns, Second Series (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1923), pp. 216–217: Archive.org

3. Louis F. Benson, Studies of Familiar Hymns (1923), p. 216: Archive.org

4. Letter from H.W. Baker to J.B. Dykes, 20 Sept. 1872, transcribed in Graham Cory, The Life, Works, and Enduring Significance of the Rev. John Bacchus Dykes (2016), B:147.

5. Lester Hostetler, “I heard the voice of Jesus say,” Handbook to the Mennonite Hymnary (Newton, KS: General Conference, 1949), p. 84.

6. Erik Routley, “VOX DILECTI,” Companion to Congregational Praise (London: Independent Press, 1953), p. 183.

7. J.R. Watson, “I heard the voice of Jesus say,” An Annotated Anthology of Hymns (Oxford: University Press, 2002), p. 276.

8. George F. Graham, “The Rowan Tree,” The Popular Songs of Scotland (Glasgow: J. Muir Wood, 1887), p. 371: Google Books

9. Email correspondence with Kevin Twit, 17 April 2020.

Related Resources:

John Julian, “I heard the voice of Jesus say,” A Dictionary of Hymnology (London: J. Murray, 1892), pp. 161, 556.

“Horatius Bonar,” Church Hymnal Set to Appropriate Tunes, (Dublin: APCK, 1876), p. 4: Google Books

Edwin Hatfield, “Horatius Bonar,” Poets of the Church (NY: A.D.F. Randolph & Co., 1884), p. 84: Archive.org

George F. Graham, “The Rowan Tree,” The Popular Songs of Scotland (Glasgow: J. Muir Wood, 1887), pp. 370–371: Google Books

Louis F. Benson, “I heard the voice of Jesus say,” Studies of Familiar Hymns, Second Series (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1923), pp. 201–219: Archive.org

Lester Hostetler, “I heard the voice of Jesus say,” Handbook to the Mennonite Hymnary (Newton, KS: General Conference, 1949), p. 84.

K.L. Parry & Erik Routley, “VOX DILECTI,” Companion to Congregational Praise (London: Independent Press, 1953), p. 183.

J.R. Watson, “I heard the voice of Jesus say,” An Annotated Anthology of Hymns (Oxford: University Press, 2002), pp. 275–276.

Graham Cory, The Life, Works, and Enduring Significance of the Rev. John Bacchus Dykes MA, Mus. Doc.: A Critical Re-appraisal, dissertation (Durham, 2016), p. 279: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11701/

Larry Peters & Joseph Herl, “I heard the voice of Jesus say,” Lutheran Service Book Companion, vol. 1 (St. Louis: Concordia, 2019), pp. 947–949.

“I heard the voice of Jesus say,” Indelible Grace Hymn Book:
http://hymnbook.igracemusic.com/hymns/i-heard-the-voice-of-jesus-say

“I heard the voice of Jesus say,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/text/i_heard_the_voice_of_jesus_say_come_unto