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Good morning

On this day in 1789, a son, Josiah, was born to a London map engraver and bookseller called Thomas Conder. The family came from a solid, nonconformist background, a fact that Josiah celebrated when he said, ‘I am not descended from the great and the opulent; but of what unspeakably greater honour it is to inherit the name . . . of the faithful servants of God?’

He left school at thirteen to enter his father’s business, and went on to become an editor, writer and poet.

When the Congregational Union decided to publish a new Hymn Book in 1833, he was chosen to be its editor. Though he had to submit the work to what was called ‘the careful scrutiny of the Reverend Secretaries of the Union, and other Ministers’, this self-educated layman stands as the editor of one of the first hymnbooks to be published by a denomination for the use of its churches.

He was proud of the breadth of material in the book. This was no narrow sectarian collection, but deliberately draws on the riches of many traditions. As he writes in the preface, the hymns of ‘Episcopal clergymen, Moravians, Wesleyan Methodists, Independents and Baptists – all harmoniously combining in this metrical service’.

Let us pray in the closing words of one of his hymns, addressed to Jesus:

Author and Guardian of my life,
Sweet source of light divine,
And (all harmonious names in one)
My Saviour, Thou art mine.

What thanks I owe Thee, and what love,
A boundless, endless store,
Shall echo through the realms above.

Amen