Music Notes for Pentecost 22 — October 20, 2024
Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise – Text: Walter Chalmers Smith (1824-1908) / Music: Melody Welsh trad.; adapt. John Roberts (1808-1876)
Click to watch the video on Youtube.
This Sunday’s final hymn in church is based on the familiar ascription of praise in 1 Timothy 1:17. Though the emphasis is clearly upon God who is eternal and unchangeable, the hymn advances through the attributes of might, justice, goodness, love, light, and life toward a climax in “Great Father of glory, pure Father of light.” The author, Walter Chalmers Smith, first published the hymn in six stanzas of four lines in his Hymns of Christ and Christian Life in 1876. The first three stanzas in our hymn books are original, but stanza four is a cento from the remaining three. Smith was born in Aberdeen, educated at Marischal College, and served as a pastor and then moderator in the Free Church of Scotland.
The tune “St Denio” is based on a Welsh folksong ‘Can Mlynedd I ‘nawr’ (A hundred years from now) and was associated with a song about a cuckoo, ‘Y God Lwydias’. As a hymn tune it appeared first in John Roberts’ Caniadau y Cyssegr 1839, where the editor simplified the melody considerably. A hearty song, it follows a ternary form. The English Hymnal 1906 was the first English book to include this tune.
Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.
Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
Thy justice, like mountains high soaring above
Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.
To all life thou givest—to both great and small;
In all life thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but naught changeth thee.
Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
All laud we would render; O help us to see
‘Tis only the splendour of light hideth thee.
Gerald Harder