“Behold the blessèd Lamb of God”
Eden L.M.
Behold the blessèd Lamb of God,
Who for the world poured out his blood;
He died and suffered on the tree
That men the grace of God might see.
Behold the bleeding Sacrifice –
Salvation at unmeasured price.
He came to this dark world below,
God’s greatest blessing to bestow.
Behold the Saviour, Christ the King,
Let all his ransomed people sing
Of him, who to redeem us died,
But reigns now at the Father’s side.
©JRW
See all hymns and psalms.
The Wanderer 
To the tune of Brookfield? (“Oh love of God, how strong and true”)
MarieP
Tuesday 27 January 2009 at 18:33
I smiled at your comment, Marie. We do so often assume that there exists “the tune” to “that hymn” – I know, because I do it myself. For example, if I mentioned to you “the tune” to Rock of Ages, cleft for me, I can almost guarantee that neither of the two tunes likely to come into your head would be ‘the right one’ i.e. the one to which I sing it. So I smiled, because I sing O love of God, how strong and true to a different tune and so had no frame of reference; when I looked up ‘Brookfield’, I found that I know it as a tune called ‘Gideon’. Confusions galore!
Anyway, all that aside, the suggested tune (‘Eden’) is slightly more assertive than ‘Brookfield’, which I think is more meditative. I might post at some point on the tunes selected for singing, as I think the mood of the hymn and the mood of the music must be sensitively matched, and not the Frankenstein’s monsters that we can all-too-easily end up with.
That said, some hymns work in a number of contexts, so while ‘Eden’ might be appropriate in some circumstances, it is quite possible that ‘Brookfield’ would work better under others. If you wanted to bring the sense of victory in this hymn to the fore, you might select the former. If you wanted to emphasise the tone of suffering, the latter might be the way forward.
In short, as long as you don’t put it to some umpty-tumpty music-hall monstrosity, or otherwise mangle the whole tone and mood of the words by marrying it to some tune to which it ought never to be yoked, you could sing it to anything appropriate.
I am not sure that that remotely helps, but for what it’s worth . . .
Jeremy Walker
Tuesday 27 January 2009 at 23:06