Henry Carey, 1692-1743, an English musician of considerable ability, known as the composer of the song, “Sally in Our Alley,” is sometimes credited with this tune but the evidence is disputed. He wrote songs and poems for light and burlesque operas but always with regard for decency and good manners. His life was ended by suicide.
345. Judge Eternal, throned in splendor
Henry Scott Holland, 1874-1918
A prayer for the nation.
The hymn was written with the English Empire in mind, but its message and concern for the removal of national evils are such as to make it appropriate for use nearly everywhere.
Henry Scott Holland had a distinguished career at Oxford and attained to numerous positions of responsibility in the Church of England. He was Professor of Divinity at Oxford and later Canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The two chief interests of his fruitful life were social reform and missionary work, both of which are embodied in this, his only hymn. The poem was published in July, 1902, in The Commonwealth, a Christian social magazine which Dr. Holland edited, and was included in the English Hymnal in 1906.
MUSIC. SICILIAN MARINERS. For comments on this tune see [Hymn 45].
346. Once to every man and nation
James Russell Lowell, 1819-91
A powerful hymn of national righteousness, taken from Lowell’s poem called “The Present Crisis,” 1845, the crisis being the war with Mexico which the author held to be unjust and would only result in enlarging the area of slavery. To make the meter of the poem regular enough to be sung, some alteration was inevitable.