Horatius Bonar
1808–1889 · Scotland · Classical
Scottish Free Church minister and the most prolific Scottish hymn writer, author of 'I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say'.
Life
Horatius Bonar was born in Edinburgh in 1808 into a family of ministers who had served the Church of Scotland for generations. He studied divinity at Edinburgh, did mission work in Leith, and in 1837 settled at Kelso as minister of the new North Church. At the Disruption of 1843 he joined the Free Church of Scotland. In 1843 he married Jane Lundie; five of their children died young. In 1866 he moved to the Chalmers Memorial Church in Edinburgh, and in 1883 he was Moderator of the Free Church General Assembly. He died in 1889.
As a Hymn Writer
Bonar wrote some six hundred hymns, first for the children of his Kelso Sunday school, later collected in Hymns of Faith and Hope (1857 onward). His hymns are evangelical and devotional, centred on Christ's finished work and the believer's rest in it ('I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say', 'Not What My Hands Have Done'), with a strong eschatological hope. Lutherans value their clear rejection of works-righteousness, though Bonar's Presbyterian setting means the Sacraments are less prominent than in Lutheran hymnody.
In The Lutheran Hymnal and Lutheran Service Book (7)
- Glory Be to God the Father
- I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say
- All that I Was, My Sin, My Guilt
- Thy Works, Not Mine, O Christ
- Not What These Hands Have Done
- Thy Way, Not Mine, O Lord
- I Lay My Sins on Jesus
Sources: Wikipedia, 'Horatius Bonar'.
Hymn Texts (16)
- A Few More Years Shall Roll
- Go Labor On
- I Lay My Sins on Jesus
- Behold the Lamb of God!
- Here O My Lord I See You Face to Face
- Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face To Face
- Beloved It Is Well!
- O Love that Casts Out Fear
- Thy Way Not Mine O Lord
- Not What My Hands Have Done
- Not What These Hands have Done
- Thy Works, Not Mine, O Christ
- Your Works Not Mine O Christ
- From All Thy Saints in Warfare
- Blessing Honor and Glory
- Blessing and Honor and Glory and Power