When new members are publicly received into a church during a morning worship service, it is quite common that to welcome them, people will sing together the familiar hymn, “Blest Be the Tie That Binds.” While that 1772 text is quite appropriate for such an occasion, that’s not exactly the setting which the 18th century author had in mind. By one count, the hymn has appeared in at least 2200 hymnals! And it has been said that more church services have been concluded with the singing of “Blest Be the Tie That Binds” and “God Be With You” than with all other hymns combined. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but this song is quite appropriate for use on other purposes than just a closing hymn. One of the greatest blessings that Christians have on earth is the fellowship and association of God’s people to give us encouragement as we try to live here in preparation for heaven. And this song so beautifully pictures the blessings of this relationship based on brotherly love, as it says, “Blest Be the Tie That Binds.”
John Fawcett (1740-1817) grew up in a poor family in Yorkshire, England, and lived his entire life in small towns (probably more like villages) in the Yorkshire moors in England. There were no railways in those days, mail was very slow, and the only way of moving around was on foot or horseback over very poor, barely-formed roads. News would travel slowly from London to a place like Hebden Bridge (his village in Yorkshire).
Fawcett was one member of a large family. His mother was left a widow when his father died of a fever at the age of fifty. She was a devout Christian lady, and encouraged him to attend the Bradford parish church, the nearest town in Yorkshire. The lecturer at this church was also the headmaster of the local school, and he taught young John the classics. One of the books Fawcett mastered was John Bunyan’s classic, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” which had been written in two parts in 1678 and 1684. Another man, the Presbyterian minister in Bradford, also taught John Latin. He was clearly a keen young student. By his mid-teens he was apprenticed to a tailor, since, being fatherless, there was no family money to enable him to study full time.
When John was 16 years old, George Whitefield arrived in Bradford on his travels around the north of England. John heard the famous evangelist preach on John 3:14: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Fawcett later recalled, “As long as life remains, I shall remember both the text and the sermon.” He first joined the Methodists, but three years later began attending the Baptist Church in Bradford. Upon telling Whitefield that he wanted to preach, the evangelist gave Fawcett his blessing.
In 1758 Fawcett formally joined the Particular Baptists, the church he stayed with for the rest of his life. The Particular Baptists were strongly Calvinistic in doctrine, and until the middle of the nineteenth century, Baptists of Reformed persuasion were in fact the majority among English Baptists. The missionary William Carey and preacher Charles Spurgeon are two of the best-known of their number. The same year he married Susannah Skirrow, five years his senior. By this time he was also trying his hand at writing, both prose and poetry. He definitely had a gift for using words, and not long after gave up his secular work to devote himself to the Baptist ministry. In 1764 he settled at Wainsgate and afterwards at Hebden Bridge, both of which were in the parish of Halifax.
Fawcett, it appears, was a born pastor. He loved the work of the ministry, was a genuine scholar, a devoted pastor, and a very gifted preacher and hymn writer. John was asked to serve as the pastor of a small church in Wainsgate at age 25. The village was described by hymnologist Albert Bailey as “a straggling group of houses on the top of a barren hill.” Bailey further described Fawcett’s congregation at Wainsgate: “The people were all farmers and shepherds, poor as Job’s turkey; an uncouth lot whose speech one could hardly understand, unable to read or write; most of them pagans cursed with vice and ignorance and wild tempers.” The established Anglican Church had never touched them. Only the humble Baptists had sent an itinerant preacher there and he had made a good beginning.
John simply loved his people, and worked hard at bringing the gospel to their hearts, including visiting them in their homes. Apparently he preached about 200 sermons a year, around four a week. They were not able to pay much, and most of what John received as wages came in the form of wool, potatoes or other produce. When John and Mary began having children they found it difficult to make ends meet. But it seems this area was not a fertile harvest field for souls. Fawcett described it as “a dry and barren place.” He must have worked very hard, because such was his reputation as a preacher that a gallery had to be erected in the church to accommodate the large congregations, many of whom traveled long distances to hear him.
After serving at Wainsgate for 7 years, his reputation as a preacher grew to the extent that he was invited to substitute for the ailing famous pastor Dr. John Gill (1697-1771) at Carter Lane Baptist Church in London. Upon Gill’s death, Fawcett was offered the position. The church was a very large and prestigious church in London that would be able to provide him a much larger salary. This was the church that would later become the Metropolitan Tabernacle Church, led by Charles Spurgeon. Gill was probably the leading minister and theologian of the denomination. In fact, one biographer states that by 1740 Gill was fast becoming “the leading theological spokesman for the Particular Baptists in both Great Britain and America.” Certainly his books were read by influential ministers in New England, including the famous preacher and theologian, Jonathan Edwards. Gill had been serving his congregation with his solid preaching for 52 years when he died at the age of 73. Clearly, they were a well-instructed church.
Although reluctant to leave his people, the young Fawcett accepted the call. His congregation heard the news with consternation and sorrow. They were deeply distressed. They made many urgent appeals to their minister, but though touched, he still believed God was calling him to go. On the last day of his ministry among them Fawcett met with his people for a final service of worship. The Fawcett family had packed their household belongings onto a small two-wheeled cart and were prepared to move. When the day came, the congregation was in tears as John and Mary geared up to leave. At the last minute, Mary is quoted as saying, “I can’t stand it, John! I know not how to go.” John responded, “Lord help me. Mary, nor can I stand it! We will unload the wagon!” And John is recorded to have said to the crowd gathered around them, “We’ve changed our minds! We are going to stay!” John and Mary unpacked the wagon and let the church in London know that they would not be accepting the position.
Fawcett then wrote this hymn, “Blest Be the Tie That Binds” to express his thoughts to the poor people with whom they had chosen to live and serve. The following Sunday, after their decision to remain at Wainsgate, John Fawcett preached from Luke 12:15, “A man’s life consists not in the abundance of the things he possesses.”He closed his sermon by reading the text of his newest song. John and Mary continued their ministry at Wainsgate for 54 years. Their salary was estimated to be never more than approximately £25 pounds ($200.00) per year. They lost their son Stephen to smallpox in 1774, his mother in 1782, and their daughter Sarah in 1785. These losses made Fawcett a more endearing pastor. In Fawcett, this “long-continued and heavy domestic affliction” brought about “the tenderest sympathy” towards those in his congregation who were also afflicted. The hymn was first published with the title, “Brotherly Love.”
Fawcett’s own ministry continued to thrive. In 1777, a new chapel was built for him in nearby Hebden Bridge. He developed a ministry academy there and trained a new generation of pastors. His influence lasts through his support of the spread of the gospel, his voice in Christian congregational song, and his efforts in training the generation of pastors that would follow him.
In 1811, Fawcett published his “Devotional Commentary on the Holy Scriptures” and was also honored with a Doctor of Divinity degree from Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, such had his fame spread even to this continent. Fawcett was the author of a number of religious poetry works, several of which attained a large circulation. Among John’s noteworthy writings was an essay titled, “Anger.” It became a favorite of King George III. It is said that the King offered John any gift or favor he desired. But John declined the offer with this statement: “I have lived among my own people, enjoying their love; God has blessed my labors among them, and I need nothing which even a king could supply.”Such was the heart and soul of the man who wrote these loving words.
Like many faithful ministers he was concerned about the growth of Deism and Unitarianism in his day, and he wrote a poem entitled “The Christian’s Humble Plea,” which was an answer to Joseph Priestley’s infamous attack on the divinity of Christ. In 1782 a collection of his hymns (in all he wrote over 160) was published with the title “Hymns Adapted to the Circumstances of Public Worship and Private Devotion.” But despite all his many gifts, and the way in which his labors had been blessed, Fawcett remained a humble man. In the preface to this last work he wrote: “I blush to think of these plain verses falling into the hands of persons of an elevated genius, and refined taste. To such, I know, they will appear flat, dull and unentertaining … If it may be conducive, under divine blessing to warm the heart or assist the devotion of any humble Christian in the closet, the family or the house of God, I shall therein sincerely rejoice, whatever censure I many incur from the polite world.” John Fawcett passed from this life into glory on July 25th, 1817, at the age of 77. We might say of him now, “Blest Be the Tie That Binds” him to his redeemer’s courts.
Stanza 1 says that we have a very special “fellowship of kindred minds.” As believers we recognize that our hearts are “knit together” (Colossians 2:2). We profess our belief in that fact as “the communion of the saints” in the Apostles’ Creed. The tie that binds us together is our mutual love for the Lord Jesus and therefore our love for one another (1 John 4:17-21). Fawcett included the idea that this fellowship with one another (1 John 1:7) “is like to that above.”
Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.
Stanza 2 says that our aims are one. As children of our heavenly Father, we all come before the same throne of grace (Hebrews 4:14-16). There “we pour our ardent prayers,” including those for one another (James 5:13-16). In this we rejoice to be together, reminded of the oneness that God desires among us (Galatians 3:18). Such unity shows itself as we share “our fear, ours hopes, our aims” as well as “our comforts and our cares.” We have so much in common!
Before our Father’s throne we pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, our comforts and our cares.
Stanza 3 says that we bear our mutual burdens. The word “share” suggests a joint-participation in some activity based upon a mutual relationship, as described by Paul in Philippians 2:1-4. It connects with the many “one-anothers” in Paul’s epistles. It’s what he referred to in Galatians 6:2 about bearing one another’s burdens. And who can fail to think about his exhortation in Romans 12:15 about rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep. Thus Fawcett leads us in singing about “our mutual woes, our mutual burdens,” and thus “flows the sympathizing tear.” We remember the tears shed on that day when he almost left his beloved congregation in Wainsgate.
We share our mutual woes, our mutual burdens bear,
And often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.
Stanza 4 says that even when we part, as we all must do in some connection at some time, we can still be joined in heart. It was parting that led to the famous words at Mizpah, “The LORD watch between you and me, when we are out of one another’s sight” (Genesis 31:49). Though that parting had ominous overtones, ours will be sweet, even when at the last we will part in death, but only temporarily. Such parting “gives us inward pain,” but because of Jesus’ work and His parting promise (John 14:3), we not only remain “joined in heart,” but also “hope to meet again.” Paul felt that mixture of pain and joy in separation from the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:36-38.
When we asunder part, it gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart, and hope to meet again.
Stanza 5 says that we can be revived and encouraged by this glorious hope of eternal life in heaven (1 Peter 1:3-5). It’s a hope that “revives our courage by the way” on our journey throughout this life on our way to glory. Because of Jesus’ great work and great promises, we live with overflowing anticipation and expectation of that day when we will be together in His presence, and see Him no longer “in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). That will come on the day He either returns, or call us out of this life of pain and suffering into the presence of the triune God, the angelic hosts, and the saints of all the ages.
This glorious hope revives our courage by the way;
While each in expectation lives and longs to see the day.
Stanza 6 says that we have an eternal tie that will bind us together in heaven. That’s when “from sorrow, toil, and pain, and sin, we shall be free.” We are like fish now, living in the darkness at the bottom of the sea, having no concept of what beauty is far above us in the light at the surface. But on that day, what amazing sights and sounds and experiences will we find in His presence. We can’t imagine now what it will be like to be free from all those dimensions of sin’s pollution within and without (Revelation 21:4) which will have for all time then have been obliterated. But the day is set unchangeable on God’s timetable. When that comes, we will enter a time when “perfect love and friendship” will “reign through all eternity” (Revelation 22:1-5). Because of this relationship that we have to one another in Christ now, the redeemed of all ages will be joined together forever rhere, singing praises to the Lamb in eternity (Revelation 7:14-17).
From sorrow, toil, and pain, and sin, we shall be free;
And perfect love and friendship reign through all eternity.
The tune DENNIS was composed by a Swiss musician, Johann (or Hans) Georg Nageli, who was born at Wetzikon near Zurich, Switzerland, on May 26, 1773 (some sources give 1768, others say 1774). At the age of eighteen he established a music publishing firm at Wetzikon in 1792. It published the first printing of the Opus 31 sonatas by Nageli’s close friend Ludwig van Beethoven. Nageli also founded the Zurcherische Singinstitut and was president of the Swiss Association for the Cultivation of Music. He was a pioneer in music education.
In 1810, Nageli published his main work, entitled “Gesangsbuldungslehre nach Pestalozzischen Grundsatzen.” Accordingto Leonard Ellwood in the Episcopal Church’s “The Hymnal 1940 Companion,” this melody comes from his setting for “O selig, selig, wer von dir,” found in his “Christliches Gesangbuch” of 1828. The most frequently used arrangement was made by the American musician Lowell Mason (1792-1872). Mason undoubtedly obtained it while studying in Europe in 1836 and 1837, where he was influenced by Nageli and determined to bring the Swiss musician’s progressive methods to the United States. It first appeared in “The Psaltery” of 1845, which he edited with George J. Webb, and was there set to “How Gentle God’s Commands” by Philip Doddridge, with the notation that it was “Arranged from J. G. Nageli,” who had died at Wetzikon on December 26, 1836.
Here is a link to the hymn as sung in London’s Metropolitan Tabernacle.