What greater theme can there be in our hymnody than the greatness of God? That is the central truth in this hymn by the British hymn-writer Timothy Dudley-Smith, a retired evangelical bishop of the Church of England. Author of more than 400 hymns, he was born in 1926 in Manchester. He studied math and theology at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After graduating in 1947, he began his ordination trained at Ridley Hall, Cambridge and was then ordained a deacon in 1950 and a priest in 1951. That theological college was named after Nicholas Ridley, the sixteenth century bishop martyred during the reign of “Bloody Mary,” it is an evangelical training school for Anglican clergy.
After ordination, Dudley-Smith served as an honorary chaplain to the Bishop of Rochester, as well as head of the Cambridge University Mission in Bermondsey, South London. In 1955, he was appointed as the editorial secretary of the Evangelical Alliance and as editor of the new “Crusade” magazine, created after Billy Graham’s 1954 London crusade. Dudley-Smith also began serving with the Church Pastoral Aid Society, serving as assistant secretary from 1959, then as secretary until 1973. He served as Archdeacon of Norwich from 1973 to 1981 and as Bishop of Thetford from 1981 to 1991. He also served as president of the Evangelical Alliance from 1987 to 1992. He was chairman of the governors of Monkton Combe School from 1992 to 1997. He married Arlette MacDonald in 1959. They were married for 48 years until her death in 2007, and had one son and two daughters. His son, James, is also ordained in the Church of England, and currently serves as rector of St. John’s Church, Yeovil.
Dudley-Smith has been part of what has been described as a British ‘hymn explosion’ following World War II. He is a member and honorary vice-president of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland. He has also been awarded fellowships from the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada and from the Royal School of Church Music. In 2003, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) “for services to hymnody.” In July 2009 he was awarded an honorary Doctor Divinity degree by Durham University.
While some of his hymns appear in most American and British hymnals, the one almost always included is “Tell Out, My Soul, the Greatness of the Lord.” It is a paraphrase of Mary’s “Magnificat,” found in Luke 1:46-55. His father influenced his love of poetry, and his first and most widely sung hymn, “Tell Out, My Soul,” was written while he was at Cambridge just after he and his wife had moved into their first home. He said of its conception, “I did not think of myself . . . as having in any way the gifts of a hymn-writer when in May 1961 I jotted down a set of verses, beginning ‘Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord.’ I was reading a review copy of the ‘New English Bible’ New Testament, in which that line appears exactly as I have put it above; I saw in it the first line of a poem, and speedily wrote the rest.” In a 2006 interview, he said that this hymn was a significant starting point in terms of his hymns being published. Dudley-Smith has served on various editorial committees, including the committee that published “Psalm Praise” in 1973.
In the 2013 survey, “The UK’s Top 100 Hymns,” conducted by the BBC’s “Songs of Praise,” “Tell Out, My Soul” was voted joint 51st alongside “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” “Tell Out, My Soul” was originally published in 1965 in “The Anglican Hymn Book,” set to the tune TIDINGS by William Llewellyn. In 1966 it was included in the evangelical Anglican hymnal “Youth Praise,” set to the GO FORTH tune by another of the often-published British hymn writers, Michael Baughen (born in 1930), another now-retired evangelical Anglican bishop. Dudley-Smith’s text was later paired with the existing hymn tune WOODLANDS, which had been composed by Walter Greatorex in 1916 for Henry Montagu Butler’s 1881, “Lift Up Your Hearts.” “Tell Out, My Soul” is now most popularly sung to Greatorex’s melody.
In the Anglican tradition, the Evening Prayer service usually includes two canticles, “The Magnificat,” Mary’s Song (Luke 1:46-55) and the “Nunc Dimittis,” Simeon’s Song (Luke 2:29-32). Choral settings of these texts abound. In addition, the canticles are often sung in a chant-style, a musical form that allows the choir and congregation to sing directly from the Scripture. Metrical paraphrases were less common in the Anglican Church. A metrical paraphrase draws out the salient themes and places them in stanzas and a structured poetic form. This text is a metrical paraphrase of the “Magnificat.” The “Magnificat” is patterned after “The Song of Hannah” found in the second chapter of 2 Samuel. The similarities between the songs may be found especially in the praise of God’s mighty acts and the liberation and salvation for the lowest of society. While it is not metrical in the sense that it follows very closely the biblical text line by line and word for word, yet one will quickly realize that Dudley-Smith has incorporated many of the phrases of Mary’s song, and has been able to include almost all of the Scripture into his hymn.
The opening line is the expression of an exuberant young Mary, a contrast to the usual more subdued translation of the opening Latin phrase, “Magnificat anima mea,” “My soul magnifies the Lord.” Mary sang this song after she learned of the conception and birth of Jesus from the angel Gabriel. This Scripture is found in the Revised Common Lectionary every year, either on the third or fourth Sunday of Advent.
Although this text is often read and proclaimed during the season of Advent, Bishop Dudley-Smith’s words are applicable at any time of the year. These words trumpet God’s enduring love and ever-present power. They herald God’s saving work, salvation that comes to all people through the birth of the Son of God into the world. This Savior comes into the world as a tiny baby in the poorest of estates, born to a mother who was willing to accept God’s greatest call.
As in the singing of any hymn, we should not only take note of the Scriptural source, but also recognize who is speaking and to whom the words are addressed. In this instance, just as in Psalm 103, we are singing to ourselves, instructing our soul in how we want our inmost being to praise the Lord. In that Psalm, we begin by singing, “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name.” As we sing Mary’s Magnificat, we are similarly addressing our own souls, and hoping that our souls are listening, and will obey what we are asking of them.
In stanza 1, we direct our souls to tell out the greatness of the Lord Himself. There is no greater theme in all the Bible. We ought to try to consider this afresh, lest we slip into a careless attitude of, “I already knew that.” We will not reach the limits of grasping the greatness of the Lord, even into the vast stretches of eternity. This thrilled Mary’s soul as she re-considered His “unnumbered blessings” which demanded to be hymned by her “spirit voice,” not least among them that she should have been chosen to give birth to the Messianic Son of God. Her desire, expressed in this stanza, was that the Lord would “tender to me the promise of His Word,” causing her to rejoice.
Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord!
Unnumbered blessings give my spirit voice;
Tender to me the promise of His Word;
In God my Savior shall my heart rejoice.
In stanza 2, we direct our souls to tell out the greatness of His name. As we sing it, we might also recall such hymns as, “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” and “Blessed Be the Name of the Lord.” And we might also remember Paul’s great prayer in Philippians 2 that “at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow.” It is by the name of Jesus that we have been redeemed, the name above all names, the name of the One whose might is seen in all “the deeds His arm has done.” With Mary, we laud “His holy Name, the Lord, the mighty One.”
Tell out, my soul, the greatness of His name!
Make known His might, the deeds His arm has done;
His mercy sure, from age to age the same;
His holy Name, the Lord, the mighty One.
In stanza 3, we direct our souls to tell out the greatness of His might. For Mary, she sang of this might in her Magnificat in terms of God’s awesome reversals in His dealings with mankind, bringing down the proud and lifting up the humble. Dudley-Smith captured that well in this stanza, writing of the “powers and dominions” who had had their glory set aside, as well as the “proud hearts and stubborn wills” that He had put to flight. In contrast, as he so well expressed it, were “the hungry fed” and “the humble lifted high.”
Tell out, my soul, the greatness of His might!
Powers and dominions lay their glory by;
Proud hearts and stubborn wills are put to flight;
The hungry fed, the humble lifted high.
In stanza 4, we direct our souls to tell out the glories of His Word. Here the hymn lyric takes on a global scope with the missionary thrust of which Mary sang, as God’s Word was coming to fulfilment with the promised Seed of Abraham through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Her song, and its theme, will be sung “to children’s children and forevermore.” May that be the longing of our hearts as we sing with Mary, not just at Christmas-time, but in every moment of worship, corporate and private.
Tell out, my soul, the glories of His Word!
Firm is His promise, and His mercy sure.
Tell out my soul, the greatness of the Lord
To children’s children and forevermore!
©1962, Renewed 1990 by Hope Publishing Co., Carol Stream, IL 60188. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
The tune name, WOODLANDS, refers to one of the schoolhouses at Gresham’s School, Norfolk, where Walter Greatorex (1877-1949) was director of music. He was an English composer and musician. Born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, and educated at Derby School and St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1900, he was appointed an assistant music master at Uppingham School. In 1911, he became Director of Music at Gresham’s School where he remained for the rest of his working life. In 1919 he composed his most famous work, WOODLANDS. That hymn tune appears in the music of almost all the “Public School Hymnals” published during the last 100 years.
At Gresham, Greatorex was known as “Gog” or “Greatoxe,” and among those he taught at the school were Benjamin Britten, Sir Lennox Berkeley and W. H. Auden. Auden wrote of him that Albert Schweizer played the organ no better than Walter Greatorex. That sentiment might not have been shared by Britten who wrote some not so flattering things about Greatorex in his diaries and letters at the school. The distrust on Britten’s part and challenging relationship between the two is reported to originate from some disparaging remarks by Greatorex on Britten’s liking for Stravinsky.
The WOODLANDS tune’s dramatic quality sets it apart from many other Magnificat settings, which tend to lean into the humble nature of the Christ child’s mother. J.R. Watson said of this pairing of Dudley-Smith’s text to the Greatorex tune, “This robust tune, with a forceful rhythm and a dramatic high note on ‘soul’ in the first line, carries the words superbly.” Reformed hymnology scholar Bert Polman wrote, “A dramatic tune, WOODLANDS is marked by irresistible melodic gestures and by the ‘breathless’ cadence of line 2, which propels us forward into line 3.” He also described the tone of the hymn in relation to other settings of the Magnificat, while at the same time dismissing the emotional complexity Mary might have felt. He wrote,
As Mary herself referred to her “low estate” or servanthood, interpreters occasionally suggest that a tone of humility should characterize the Magnificat; some hymnals have even linked her canticle to insipid tunes that make the Magnificat sound like the mumbling of an introvert teenager who is shamed by an unplanned pregnancy. Not so with this hymnic version by Timothy Dudley-Smith! Using the incipit line from the “New English Bible,” he cast Mary’s song as a bold hymn of thanksgiving, a jubilant psalm that praises God for divine blessings, mercy, might, and faithfulness. The four tightly constructed stanzas ring with a joy that requires a typically Hebraic “shouting from the mountain top.”
Here is the singing of this Christmas canticle from an Anglican cathedral in Ireland.