This beautiful hymn amazes me because it comes, lyrics and tune, out of the 20th century. It reads and sounds like it should come from the Puritan era.
Kate Barclay Wilkinson, the author of “May the Mind of Christ My Savior”, was born in 1859, in Wooland Bank, Timperley, Cheshire, England. A member of the Church of England, she was involved in a ministry to girls and young women in west London. It was cited in some of the biographies that I read that her husband was an engineer. It should be instructive to us all of how a woman of an obviously high social standing spent her talents for the Kingdom of God. The words to her hymn, as well as the example of her selfless life, should cause us too to seek to have the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5-8). Kate Barclay Wilkinson died on December 28, 1928, in Kensington, London, England.
Arthur Cyril Barham-Gould, composed the hymn tune ST. LEONARDS. He was born in England in 1891 and educated at Ridley Hall at Cambridge. He was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1927. He served from that time at various churches until his death. He died on February 14, 1953, in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England.
Both of these figures being servants of God in the Church of England; would that that church were filled with such servants even today.
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Hi Wayne
I’m from King Island, Tasmania, Australia, where my husband and I live and work,(he as a Meat Inspector, and me as a nurse). But of late I’ve been home very sick with Shingles. Despite the pain, or maybe because of it, God has continued to give me songs to add to a cantata I’ve been compiling over the past couple of years, and just this morning felt I must put some words down about the Lord’s parting gift of the Holy Spirit and Paul’s admonition to be ‘filled with the Spirit’. It’s so very easy to skip over this part if our church doesn’t major on it, or only leaves it to a once-yearly Whit-Sunday message.
Anyway on most occasions the Lord also gives me a tune for my words, but because of my tiredness etc I felt He was helping me out today by letting me dig into my ‘bank vault’ of precious hymns learned from childhood, for a tune to fit the words. As soon as I asked the Lord for such a tune, a number immediately came to mind. Then came “May the Mind of Christ my Saviour” and I felt I’d found the tune I should use, but then had to check to see if it was Public Domain or not.
It was lovely reading your comment on the author and composer and I wondered if you would let me use that as a footnote at the end of my own hymn please? At this stage it is only partly finished, and I may even include one of the verses from the original to tie in with the theme on my heart. If you are interested I can email you the finished words, or more if you’d like that.
By the way my website, is a little part-time business I have along with nursing and song-writing. We Aussies are very blessed with ancient bush-tucker and this is the baseis of Kakadu Juice - a new and highly nutritious, God-given blend of fruits mixed with some other exotics, and at only 30ml (1oz) daily is very easily incorporated into the breakfast routine. Testimonials coming from happy users are beginning to be posted to the webpage, but there are many, many more. Because its still a young company, it’s only marketed in Oz and New Zealand so far, but watch out; it won’t be too long before it will be on its way to USA!!! (When the time is right).
I can see I’m going to have to visit your page a lot more, since there is so much interesting reading. Must go now though,
Cheers and blessings, Jo