And all my fears dispel.
’Tis mercy, mercy, I implore,
I would Thy pity move,
Thy grace is an exhaustless store
And Thou Thyself art love.
Benjamin Beddome (1717-95) was for more than half a century a Baptist minister at Bourton-on-the-Water, refusing for the sake of his rustic flock the attractions of a call to more conspicuous pastorates. ‘I would rather honour God,’ he said, ‘in a station even much inferior to that in which He has placed me, than intrude myself into a higher without His direction.’ His hymns were written for his own congregation, and usually to suit his sermon for the day.
There is not much to choose amongst Beddome’s pious verses. The following lines are interesting since they may, perhaps, have suggested Montgomery’s well-known hymn:
Prayer is the breath of God in man,
Returning whence it came;
Love is the sacred fire within,