Saviour, like a shepherd, lead us

with
BRADBURY 

I. Text: Earliest Sources

The author of this beloved hymn is almost certainly Henry Francis Lyte (1793–1847). The circumstances supporting his authorship—as opposed to Dorothy Ann Thrupp (1779–1847)—are as follows.

The hymn was first printed in Hymns for the Young: Selected for the Purpose of Being Committed to Memory (London: Religious Tract Society, 1832), given in four stanzas of six lines, unattributed. The collection itself was unattributed, as were all of the hymns. The book was printed in at least nine editions through 1850, none of which carried any names. Thrupp has been identified as the compiler-editor in other sources, apparently without debate.

In 1833, this version of the hymn was reprinted in Hymns Selected and Original, Principally Intended to Aid the Devotional Exercises of Children and Teachers in the Leeds Sunday School Union (Leeds: John Heaton, 1833), credited to the Tract Society’s Hymns for the Young. It was also given in the Religious Tract Society’s Sunday School Hymns for Singing (1836), uncredited.

In 1833, the hymn appeared in a book titled Ellen’s Visit to the Shepherd (London: L.B. Seeley and Sons, 1833). The book was “By the author of ‘Little Mary; or God in Everything,” identified in other sources as Julia Puddicombe. Again, the hymn appeared in four stanzas of six lines, with some small differences from the 1832 text (1:3, 2:3, 3:6, 4:4–6). The book contains some other hymns, including “The Lord my Shepherd is, / And he my soul will keep” (pp. 23–24), which is credited to Josiah Conder in other sources, and “Shepherd of the chosen sheep” (pp. 59–60), which was given the following year in Henry Lyte’s Spirit of the Psalms (1834) but beginning “Glorious Shepherd of the sheep.”

On the surface, this proves little, other than Puddicombe’s access to an early copy of Lyte’s paraphrase of Psalm 23. She evidently had not copied “Saviour, like a Shepherd lead us” directly from the 1832 print—she got it from another source—but this does not prove she got it from Lyte. Nevertheless, Puddicombe seems to have been personally acquainted with Lyte, and she apparently lived in Brixham where Lyte was curate, because she had compiled a manuscript collection of his hymns in 1829, which she later gave to Catherine Hutchinson.[1]

In 1838, the hymn was printed in the June issue of The Children’s Friend, vol. 15 (London: Seeley, Jackson and Halliday), edited by William Carus Wilson, where it was credited to Lyte. For comparison, some hymns by Thrupp had appeared in the same periodical, hers being signed with her pseudonym, “Iota.” Two other hymns by Lyte appeared in The Children’s Friend in 1838, “Lord, thy best blessing shed,” which was signed “H. Lyte,” and “Hark, round the God of love,” which was uncredited but was later quoted in Lyte’s Remains (1850).

Also in 1838, the hymn appeared uncredited in A Selection of Hymns and Poetry for the Use of Infant Schools and Nurseries (London: E. Suter | Fig. 4), edited by Elizabeth Mayo. The text here is identical to the first source, except for 1:2, where “tenderest” has been simplified to “tender.” It’s worth noting how Thrupp was named as a contributor in the preface to the second edition, and in that edition, she had 39 hymns signed “D.A.T.,” but “Saviour, like a Shepherd, lead us” was not one of them. Given the absence of credit given to her here, or in The Children’s Friend, where her hymns were signed “Iota,” Thrupp’s attachment to the hymn can be safely ruled out. To put it another way, two compilers in 1838 who were familiar with her work and gave her credit where appropriate did not attach her name to “Saviour, like a shepherd, lead us”; Wilson credited the hymn to Lyte.

The hymn appeared in a few other collections in Lyte’s and Thrupp’s lifetimes, always uncredited. The assignment of the hymn to Lyte, therefore, depends largely upon the hymn’s appearance in The Children’s Friend, and on the apparent acquaintance between Lyte and Julia Puddicombe, who is known to have collected hymns by Lyte.

J.R. Watson, looking at the hymn from a literary standpoint, does not believe the text is consistent with Lyte’s known output:

Here the ideas, which are nicely handled, are more insistently metaphorical than Lyte would have written, as in lines such as “For our use Thy folds prepare” and “With Thyself our bosoms fill”; and the insistence on sin and grace, in “Thou hast mercy to relieve us,/ Grace to cleanse, and make us free” suggest an evangelical piety rather than the restraint of Lyte’s Anglicanism.[2]

II. Text: Analysis

The hymn is written in the form of a collective prayer. The first stanza capitalizes on shepherding imagery, asking to be fed in pleasant pastures, his people grouped into folds; and this is gentle leadership, tender care. The last line, however, puts a stake of ownership on this relationship, in line with Paul’s exhortation to the leaders in Ephesus: “Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood” (Acts 20:28, NKJV), except here, the responsibility for tending the flock is placed on the elders (but see also Eph. 1:13–14, 1 Cor. 6:20, 7:23, 1 Pet. 1:18–19).

The second stanza expands the Savior’s role by asking him to be friend and guardian or defender, and to hear us when we pray. And just like the shepherd who left the ninety-nine to find the one (Matt. 18:12–14, Lk. 15:4–7), we ask him to “Seek us when we go astray.” Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray.”

The third stanza begins with a promise, perhaps evoking 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” When it suggests we “early” turn to God, this possibly means early in age, in childhood, but Pastor Robert Cottrill sees this also as a way of saying “. . . it’s a pledge that we’ll keep short accounts with God . . . . When we sin, we’ll deal with it as quickly as possible.”[3]

The fourth stanza again sets the expectation of being “early,” which here could mean “quickly” (without delay), or it could be a matter of personal habit, beginning each day in this fashion. We longed to be filled (Eph. 5:18, Col. 1:9) and to be loved (John 15:9, 1 John 4:7–11).

III. Tunes

The most popular and successful tune for this text has been the tune by William Bradbury (1816–1868) from Oriola (1859). This initial score was given in three parts (soprano, alto, bass), with the top two parts progressing almost entirely in parallel thirds. This sometimes means the third of the chord is either missing or implied. The simple structure of the tune (AABB') lends itself well to quick adoption, aided by the repetitions in the text. Bradbury’s tune is traditionally given his name, BRADBURY, and this practice seems to date at least as far back as 1921.

A four-part arrangement, based on the one above, appeared in Bradbury’s Devotional Hymn and Tune Book (Philadelphia: American Baptist Pub. Soc., 1864).

by CHRIS FENNER
with JOSEPH HERL
for Hymnology Archive
18 July 2024

Footnotes:

1. The existence of this manuscript was described in Notes & Queries for Somerset and Dorset, Frederic William Weaver and Charles Herbert Mayo, eds., vol. 14 (Dec. 1914, Mar. 1915), pp. 168–169 and 225–227.

2. J.R. Watson, “Saviour, like a shepherd, lead us,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: CDH

3. Robert Cottrill, “Savior, like a shepherd, lead us,” Wordwise Hymns (21 May 2012): WH

Related Resources:

William T. Brooke, “Saviour, like shepherd lead us,” A Dictionary of Hymnology, ed. John Julian (London: J. Murray, 1892), p. 996: HathiTrust

Carl P. Daw Jr., “Savior, like a shepherd, lead us,” Glory to God: A Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2016), p. 190.

Joseph Herl, “Savior, like a shepherd, lead us,” Lutheran Service Book Companion to the Hymns, vol. 1 (St. Louis: Concordia, 2019), p. 978–981.

“Savior, like a shepherd, lead us,” Hymnary.org: https://hymnary.org/text/savior_like_a_shepherd_lead_us