Lord’s Day, Vol. 9 No. 26
Blest Be the Tie That Binds
1. Blessed be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like that to that above.
2. Before our Father’s throne
We pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one
Our comforts and our cares.
3. We share each other’s woes,
Our mutual burdens bear;
And often for each other flows
The sympathizing tear.
4. When we asunder part,
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again.
5. This glorious hope revives
Our courage by the way;
While each in expectation lives,
And longs to see the day.
6. From sorrow, toil and pain,
And sin, we shall be free,
And perfect love and friendship reign
Through all eternity.
– John Fawcett
The story of “Blest Be the Tie That Binds” is locked into the events of the author’s life. John Fawcett was born in 1740 in Lidget Green, Yorkshire, England. He was orphaned at the age
of twelve, and at thirteen he began a six-year apprenticeship (actually an enslavement) to a London tailor. John was required to work from six in the morning to eight in the evening daily. At night, when he retired to his attic room, the lad would lie on the floor and read Pilgrim’s Progress. His reading light was a candle that he hid under “an earthen bushel”.
Pilgrim’s Progress afforded John his first experience with spiritual matters. At fifteen or sixteen he attended a meeting conducted by the Reverend George Whitefield in a large field with twenty thousand people in attendance. John was soundly converted. He joined the Baptist church in Bradford in 1758, and, having answered the call to the ministry, he was ordained a Baptist minister in 1763.
John’s first pastorate was at a small church in Wainsgate, Yorkshire. Wainsgate was “less than a village.” When Fawcett and his bride, who was five years his senior, arrived in Wainsgate, they found only a few houses on a barren hill. There being no parsonage, they had to “board around.” Wainsgate was described as “uneducated, pagan, and hot-tempered.” Their meeting place was a small, damp house, which had a seating capacity of 100 people. The congregation had to sit on stools for there were no benches.
The Wainsgate Baptist Church grew rapidly that the men of the church had to add a balcony to the meeting place; later the church’s growth forced them to build a larger church, the property for which was donated by a local farmer.
John Fawcett earned only $200 (25 pounds) a year, and part of that amount was in potatoes and wool. In 1772, possibly because of his meager salary and his increasing family (four children in five years), Pastor Fawcett accepted a call to succeed the noted John Gill at Carter Lane Baptist Church in London. No doubt Fawcett reasoned that in London he would be able to “reach more people for the Lord.”
The following traditional and touching, though unauthenticated, story of this hymn was first told in 1869 in Josiah Miller’s Singers and Songs of the Church. A similar account had appeared earlier, however, in John Gadsby’s Memoirs of the Principal Hymn Writers and Compilers of the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries (London, 1861).
Fawcett’s farewell sermon was preached on a Sunday of 1772. The next day he and his family emerged from their dwelling place to walk to the dray that would take them and their meagre belongings to London. How surprised they were to see around the dray their parishioners who had come to say goodbye. The Fawcetts looked upon the smiling, but tear-stained, faces of their friends, and they felt a stirring of heart. “How can I leave these people?” thought Mr. Fawcett. “They love the Lord, they love our family, and they need our ministry.” Mrs. Fawcett sensed her husband’s thoughts, and she asked, “John. Do you think that we should leave these people?” “No,” he answered. “We should not leave, and we shall not leave.” And turning to the men of the church, he said, “Men, start unloading our belongings. I shall notify the London church that I cannot come.”
In honour of his people’s devotion, Pastor Fawcett penned a poem that he entitled “Brotherly Love” (Later known as “Blest Be the Tie That Binds”). He finished the poem at midnight on Saturday night, and on Sunday he read it to his congregation. Again the people wept. This time, however, their tears were tears of joy for being able to have their beloved pastor and his family a while longer.
A while longer, indeed! Fawcett’s time at Wainsgate stretched to fifty-four years. During this time he founded a training school for young ministers, wrote many theological books and commentaries, and composed numerous hymns (166 of which were included in his Hymns Adapted to the Circumstances of Public Worship and Printed Devotion, published in 1782). Appearing as number 104 in Fawcett’s publication of 1782, although it may have been written as early as 1772, “Blest Be the Tie That Binds” consisted of the six four-line stanzas printed above. Most hymnals print only the first four stanzas.
Fawcett’s Essay on Anger impressed King George III to offer the author “any benefit he could confer.” The minister answered, “Thank you, but I live among a people who love me. The Lord has blessed my labours among these people, and I need nothing that a king can supply.”
In 1811, Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, recognized Fawcett’s accomplishments by conferring upon him the honourary Doctor of Divinity degree. Fawcett died of a stroke on July 25, 1817.
The tune Dennis, to which this hymn is most often sung, was possibly composed by Johann (Hans) Nageli (1773-1836), a musician and publisher at Wetzikon, Switzerland. He published many works of Beethoven, Clementi, and Cramer and was a pioneer music educator. Lowell Mason, who arranged and introduced this tune in 1845, was greatly influenced by Nageli’s educational methods and applied them in American schools. [Extracted from Treasury of Great Hymns and their stories by Guye Johnson]
Yours lovingly,
Pastor Lek Aik Wee