Heber, a Hymn Writer

He had had a brilliant career at Oxford , won prestigious awards for his poetry, and was a prolific writer of hymns, writing since 1811. He wrote 57 hymns, conforming to his strict rule of hymn writing: nothing erotic (Charles Wesley's ‘Jesus lover of my soul' was anathema to him), nothing beyond the warrant of the scriptures. Some of these hymns are in our hymnals even to day and we still sing them. There are glorious hymns such as ‘ Holy, Holy. Holy, Lord God Almighty,' ‘Bread of life in mercy broke,' ‘God that madest earth and heaven,' e tc. However, he also wrote some awful hymns, which in our time will be considered politically incorrect, and probably were counter productive in presenting the Gospel of Christ to the people of India .

When he was the rector at Hodnet, he penned one of his famous hymns, ‘from Greenland's Icy Mountains …' and some of it jars on modern ears.

From Greenland 's icy mountains,
From India 's coral strand…
They call us to deliver
Their land from error's chain.
Where every prospect pleases,
An only man is vile …
The savage in his blindness
Bows down to wood and stone.

Incidentally Gandhi chided missionaries for misrepresenting Hinduism. “You, the missionaries," he said, “come to India thinking that you have come to a land of the heathens, of idolaters, of men who do not know God. One of the greatest of Christian divines, Bishop Heber, wrote two lines, which have always left a sting with me: 'Where every prospect pleases. And man alone is vile.' I wish," Gandhi said, " he had not written it… I am not able to say that here in this fair land, watered by the great Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Jumna, man is vile. He is not vile. He is as much a seeker after truth as you and I are, possibly more so."

Tagore also bitterly condemned this method, describing it as being “...like a coolie recruiter trying to bring coolies to his master's tea garden."

We are all products of our time. I think the German word Zeitgeist, aptly describes the situation i.e. (1) the spirit of the times. (2) The trend of thought and feeling in a period. It denotes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era. The West is less sure today that it has monopoly over wisdom, light and truth. But I suppose Heber was a product of his time.

Heber returned to Calcutta on October 21, 1825 after spending more than a year touring his episcopate, starting from Calcutta on the Hoogly River, visiting Eastern India, Northern India, ending in Western India, and then returning on a ship via Ceylon (now Sri Lanka.) He had been away for over a year.

Untimely Death

The only part of his episcopate in India that he had not visited was Southern India, and so he set out on a tour of the South. On the 27th of Feb he preached at St. George's Cathedral, Madras (now called Chennai) one of his most famous sermons on the fear of death, with the text ‘to die is gain,' and it looks like the sermon was prescient.

On April 03, he attended a service for Tamil – speakers, at Trichinopoly, confirmed eleven people, and gave his blessings in Tamil. He then went to his bungalow, to rest and bathe, and died in the cool bathing pool. He was not yet forty three years old. The son of a wealthy land owner and a cleric, he was so far away from the parish at Hodnet, where he was born, where the cherry trees grew, and roses filled the air with scent. Heber was buried at Trichinopoly deep in the south of India , where the tall palm trees swayed in the breeze and the aroma of ripe mangoes filled the air.

When the news reached Madras , Calcutta and Bombay , flags were flown at half mast, and Lord Amherst, the Governor General of India ordered a 43 gun salute for 43 years of his earthly life.

He was buried there. Over the grave itself is a florid slab of black marble inset with brass, with some blue and red colouring, with a scroll in marble carved: ‘ Here rest the remains of Reginald Heber, D.D. third bishop of Calcutta .' The florid slab had been sent from England , and unfortunately there was a typo error, because Reginald Heber was the second Bishop of Calcutta and not the third. But as the saying goes, it was written in stone, and could not be erased. The local church elders were embarrassed, and decided to put in a small brass plate on the grave, as a corrigendum stating that he was in fact the second bishop of Calcutta .

A Descant

Sometimes in the loneliness of my thoughts, I wonder what made Heber do what he did. But then soaring above the tumult of his adventures, his joys and sorrows, his hopes and disappointments, I hear, like a descant the melody of absolute obedience, faithfulness and devotion, to serve Him, and follow Him to the ends of the world, to the end of his life, and endeavour to fulfill the task He set for him; whatever the price, whatever the hardship, and that, I realise is the cost of discipleship. If you look at a starry night and see a twinkling light, it may be from a star long extinct, and yet that light having traveled through eons of time, shines for us. And so it is with luminaries, such as Heber, though long gone, their light shines for us in our firmament, even in our time.

Collect

The Anglican Church of Canada commemorates and prays for Reginald Heber on April 04 (BAS), and the following Collect is said:

Almighty God, you granted to Reginald Heber a manifold life of service, to shepherd a rural parish in England and to preach in the cities of India . Give to your people such faithfulness, that in every place and circumstance they may sing of your power and minister your gifts for the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Early in the morning, our song shall rise to thee

And today this great Churchman, a disciple of Christ has his larger than life statue within the portals of St Paul 's Cathedral. Kolkata. He is kneeling on a high pedestal; his right hand on his heart, his left holding the Bible. As late comers hurriedly walk past his statue, scarcely giving it a glance, perhaps they do not even know who it is that welcomes them with a blessing, snaking past the procession already formed in the narthex, the organ strikes a D Major and swells, the crucifer raises the cross, the procession begins to move forward, and the congregation rises to sing with the heavenly hosts one of the great hymns of Christendom, a hymn penned by Reginald Heber:

Holy Holy Holy
Lord God Almighty
Early in the morning
Our song shall rise to thee.