This hymn was in Monsell’s Hymns of Love and Praise for the Church’s Year 1863, a collection that he dedicated to two of his children. Altogether he wrote some 300 hymns, which were published in 11 volumes.

John Samuel Bewley Monsell (1811-1875; see SDAH 6) was an Irish-born minister of the Anglican Church. He also wrote SDAH 6, “O Worship the Lord,” and SDAH 68, “On Our Way Rejoicing.”

William Boyd was born at Montego Bay, Jamaica, and received his early training in England from Sabine Baring-Gould. After attendance at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, and experience as a choral scholar at Worcester College, he became a priest in the Church of England and served as rector in Sussex and vicar of All Saints, Norfolk Square, London. He stayed at the latter from 1893 until his retirement in 1918. His final years were spent in blindness, and he died February 16, 1928.

The tune PENTECOST was written at the request of Sabine Baring- Gould to go with the text “Come, Holy Ghost, Our Souls Inspire,” and was first published in Thirty-two Hymn Tunes Composed by Members of the University of Oxford, 1868. Boyd himself tells the story of the tune in the Musical Times, XLIX, 1908: “One day, as I was walking along Regent Street, I felt a slap on my back, and turning round I saw my dear old friend Arthur Sullivan [see SDAH 169].  ‘My dear Billy,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen a tune of yours which I must have.’ (He was then editing Church Hymns.) ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Send me a [check] and I agree. No copy of the book, much less a proof, was sent to me, and when I saw the tune I was horrified to find that Sullivan had assigned it to Fight the Good Fight.’ We had a regular fisticuffs about it, but judging from the favor with which the tune has been received, I feel that Sullivan was right in so mating words and music.

“The tune was printed in the 1875 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern without my permission. In their last edition they turned me out, also without my permission. Still, they had to come back, I rejoice to say, for people said, the old was better.’ Since then it has found its way into most collections, Church of England and Nonconformist, and has gone all over the English- speaking world.  To give you an instance of its far-reaching sweep, let me mention a reminiscence. On landing at Jamaica in January, 1902, I was approaching the great church at Kingston-now a desolation since the earthquake-when a quarter of a mile off, I heard my tune being heartily sung-bellowed, I had almost said-by a congregation of 2,000, mostly Black people. The effect was deafening.”

When the Musical Times asked for a copy of the tune to reproduce with his article, Boyd replied: “With pleasure. It is only four notes! [Actually it has five.] And I will write the heading ‘Pentecost,’ because ‘Pen’ is the first syllable of my wife’s name, and she is very fond of the tune.” (He named it PENTECOST because it was originally written for a text about the Holy Spirit, as noted above.)

The tune does seem more suited to a prayer for the Holy Spirit than to this one of Christian warfare. But there is no accounting for the will of the people in such matters.

📖 Reference: Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White. Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1988.