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One of my favourite hymns was sung as this morning’s gradual hymn at Christ Church Cathedral, Whitehorse.
All people that on earth do dwell,
sing to the Lord with cheerful voice:
him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell,
come ye before him and rejoice.The Lord, ye know, is God indeed;
without our aid he did us make:
we are his folk, he doth us feed,
and for his sheep he doth us take.O enter then his gates with praise,
approach with joy his courts unto;
praise, laud, and bless his Name always,
for it is seemly so to do.For why? the Lord our God is good,
his mercy is for ever sure;
his truth at all times firmly stood,
and shall from age to age endure.To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
the God whom heaven and earth adore,
from men and from the angel host
be praise and glory evermore.
The words, based on Psalm 100, are by William Kethe, a Marian exile who lived in Geneva c 1557. He was one of translators of the Geneva Bible of 1560 and wrote 25 hymns in the Genevan Psalter of 1561. After his return to England under Queen Elizabeth I, he was vicar of a parish in Dorsetshire until the year before his death in 1594.
The tune is generally attributed to Loys Bourgeois, who is believed responsible for most of the tunes in the Genevan Psalter. Because it was used for William Kethe’s paraphrase of Psalm 100, the tune became known as “Old 100th”. It is also the tune for “The Doxology”.
