Timothy Dudley-Smith, writer of “Inform Out, My Soul,” “Lord, for the Years,” “Sing a New Tune” and greater than 400 different hymns, died Aug. 12 in Cambridge, England. He’s 97 years outdated.
Dudley-Smith was a Church of England bishop, serving as suffragan, or assistant bishop, of Thetford, Norwich, for 12 years earlier than retiring in 1991. Earlier than taking a place in management, he served as director of the Church Pastoral Support Society. .
However he was all the time extra extensively identified for his hymns. Many Anglicans cherished his phrases deeply.
“These hymns restore our religion, not solely within the gospel, but additionally within the act of singing that gospel collectively, with coronary heart, soul, and voice,” wrote a retired English professor at Durham College in 2006. Smith by no means disappoints us. There aren’t any weak strains, no approximate rhymes, no distortions of sentence construction, no unstable meters … no dangerous hymns.”
Dudley-Smith’s hottest hymn, “Inform Out, My Soul,” has been printed 190 occasions in Nice Britain and is standard in america and elsewhere. It was first written in 1961, and by 1985, appeared in 42 p.c of all modern hymns, based on hymnary.org.
Ten different Dudley-Smith songs have been printed greater than two dozen occasions. “The trustworthy watch is over”—“The trustworthy watch is over/ The wait is ending/ Lord, grant your servant/ His discharge in peace”—seems in 28 completely different hymns. Written in 1979, “Title of All Majesty” has appeared in additional than 70 languages, together with translations into French, Korean and Chinese language.
Dudley-Smith was a dedicated evangelist and was uncovered to the gospel from childhood. However his work was accepted throughout occasion strains within the Church of England.
Ian Bradley, a church historian, hymn editor, and BBC journalist, wrote that Dudley-Smith represented “a really orthodox Anglican custom of songwriting” and was “unabashedly evangelical”. On the similar time, based on Bradley, his work was seen as “too English” and someway “broad sufficient to incorporate Noel Coward, WS Gilbert, Stephen Sondheim and Shakespeare, in addition to JI Packer and Martin Lloyd-Jones.”
Dudley-Smith, for his half, was usually very modest about his hymns. He usually famous that he was not likely a musician and wrote no music, solely rhymed poems that might be set to completely different singable tunes. He titled his 2017 e-book On Hymn Writing A purposeful trade.
“All our verse texts won’t be Rolls-Royces, nor ought to they be,” writes Dudley-Smith, “however they’re all decently roadworthy, and as true as Scripture, as unblemished, as rigorously constructed, interesting to the creativeness, the guts, and the desire.” And as user-friendly as we are able to make them.”
Dudley-Smith was born in Manchester on December 26, 1926—Boxing Day—to oldsters Phyllis and Arthur. His father was a schoolteacher who usually learn poetry to his youngsters, usually placing them to mattress with poems by AE Housman, Walter de la Mare, and Alfred Tennyson:
A lot is taken, a lot stays; and but’
We’re not the ability we had been within the outdated days
Earth and heaven transfer, we’re, we’re;
An excellent mood of a courageous coronary heart,
Weakened by time and destiny, however robust by will
Tried, searched, searched and to no avail
That trinity of Victorian poets turned his favourites, adopted by Twentieth-century British figures comparable to TS Eliot, Philip Larkin and John Betjeman.
When Dudley-Smith was 11, her father died. He later recalled that it was a pivotal second for his religion.
“I prayed after I knew he was sick, and also you may suppose that my prayers would have stopped me if the state of affairs hadn’t modified,” he stated in an interview. “However it did not occur. It launched me to the necessity for a heavenly father.”
Across the similar time, Dudley-Smith determined he wished to develop into a minister.
“At a household tea occasion somebody stated to me (as they did in these days), ‘What’s going to you be once you develop up?’ I used to be answering to myself, ‘I’m going to be a parson.’ It got here out proper. I knew it myself first!” He stated
Dudley-Smith was energetic in Scripture Union and taught the Bible within the group’s youngsters’s program. His religion deepened at a boys’ summer season camp run by EJH Nash, a priest from the conservative Evangelical Church of England.
When he went to Cambridge, he thought of learning arithmetic and schooling like his late father, however in the end selected theology. He studied at Pembroke Faculty after which skilled for ordination at Ridley Corridor, each in Cambridge.
Dudley-Smith was ordained a deacon in 1950 and a priest in ’51. His bishop—a former Olympic athlete and rugby participant referred to as the “Flying Curate”—supported evangelist Billy Graham’s go to to England in 1954 and inspired Dudley-Smith to become involved. The younger minister helped lead the schoolboys’ drive to the racetrack in north London the place Graham preached for 4 weeks, after which, responding to standard demand, prolonged his keep by one other two months.
The next yr, Dudley-Smith joined the employees of the Evangelical Alliance and have become editor of the group’s journal, the campaign.
His journalism received reward from the priest in command of the BBC’s non secular broadcasting. The journal was “one thing distinctively new in non secular journalism in Britain. It was a shiny journal … it had cartoons and a humorousness and combined devotional materials with commentary on world occasions and – its editor’s trademark innovation – severe poetry.”
Dudley-Smith’s love of poetry was well-known by colleagues and she or he additionally wrote her personal poems. He thought of making an attempt to jot down songs however dismissed the likelihood.
“I am stuffed with music!” He says “I am unable to sing in tune and infrequently change issues with out understanding it.”
Within the early Sixties, a priest was doing new work Anglican Hymbook Approached him and requested him what tune he had written. When he stated no, the priest stated, “Have you ever written any verses that might make a hymn?” And the reply was sure.
Dudley-Smith commissioned somebody to assessment the New English Bible the campaign And to have a look at Mary’s tune of reward in Luke 1, the Magnificat.
“Their model of Mary’s tune begins, ‘Say, my soul, the greatness of the Lord,'” Dudley-Smith later recalled. “I stated to myself, ‘That is verse,’ and wrote 4 quick verses.”
This turned his first and hottest tune:
Say, my soul, the greatness of the Lord!
Numerous blessings, give voice to my soul;
The promise of His phrase is tender to me;
My coronary heart will rejoice in God my Savior.
The hymn editors, nonetheless, first set it to a tune that did not work. At a convention of 600 pastors working via tune, individuals really gave up singing midway via it. Then the phrases had been set to Woodlands, a tune composed within the early 1900s, and it labored. The hymn was properly acquired and extensively sung.
The poet Betjeman stated it was “one of many few fashionable stanzas that can actually final.”
The editors of the brand new Anglican Hymbook Dudley-Smith prompt that he write extra non secular themes, and he made hymn writing an everyday a part of his life and ministry. He printed a quantity of his hymns in 1966 and one other in ’69. Collectively, they offered over one million copies.
His prodigious output drew comparisons with Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley, and a few contemporaries hailed him as the best evangelical hymn author of his day.
Dudley-Smith’s daughter Caroline Gill remembers that he wrote many of the hymns on vacation in Cornwall.
“My father would rise early to hope together with his Bible and write in his manuscript e-book, into which had been stripped the texts collected over the course of a yr, able to be honored in hymns,” Gill wrote. “My dad would typically work at a textual content on the seaside, between a pasty lunch and a day surf.”
Though he wrote rather a lot, it did not all the time stream. He wished his hymns to be easy and profound, heartfelt and clear, biblical however uncontroversial. An excessive amount of repetition would make him giddy and he additionally moved away from approximate rhymes, eg sin And the king. He describes his course of as sluggish, cautious and painstaking.
“I discover you need to be ready for 2 strains from a number of hours’ work,” he as soon as stated, “and scrap them within the subsequent assessment.”
The work was value it, although, as a result of the hymns had an affect on individuals’s lives.
“Many individuals be taught extra theology from hymns than from elsewhere,” says Dudley-Smith. “They supply a company participation in a novel manner, enabling an expression of reward, remorse, dedication and all issues collectively. Additionally, I feel, for many individuals, the hymn provides a possibility to precise the feelings which might be of their hearts, however which they don’t wish to specific themselves. can be inconvenienced.”
Dudley-Smith’s second-most standard hymn, “Lore, for the Years” turned standard in Church of England New 12 months providers and anniversaries. It has additionally been used to rejoice nationwide non secular occasions in the UK, together with the coronation of Anglican Archbishops in 1991 and the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in 2002.
He was made an Officer of the Most Glorious Order of the British Empire in 2003 – which is a number of ranks under knighthood – for his “providers to hymnody”.
Dudley-Smith additionally wrote an authoritative two-volume biography of evangelical chief John Stott, who was a private pal. Quantity 1 was titled John Stott: The Making of a Chief; Quantity 2, John Stott: A International Ministry. He edited a set of Charles Wesley’s hymns and a set of English hymns, and continued to jot down his personal hymns in retirement.
“Songwriting is the richest and most sudden reward for me,” he stated.
He calls it “one of the best of all trades.”
Dudley-Smith’s spouse, June Arlette MacDonald, died in 2007 after 48 years of marriage. He’s survived by daughters Caroline Gill and Sarah Walter, and son James Dudley-Smith, who adopted him into ministry within the Church of England.
