"O'er the gloomy hills of darkness."—No. 911.
This is hymn 38 in "Gloria in Excelsis," 1772. It is given with slight verbal alterations, and with the omission of two verses. It is especially interesting as being a noble missionary hymn, composed before the founding of the modern missionary societies.
BENJAMIN BEDDOME, M.A.
1717—1795.
This Christian pastor and poet was born at Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire, January 23rd, 1717; but at the age of seven, he removed to Bristol with his father, the Rev. John Beddome, who had undertaken a co-pastorate at the Pithay church. At a suitable age he was apprenticed to a surgeon in Bristol, and afterwards removed to London.
John Beddome, his father, was a Baptist minister, and when at the age of twenty Benjamin had received deep religious impressions; he used often to weep as he listened to his father s faithful discourses, though in his earlier years he had heard with indifference. In 1739 he became a member of Mr. Wilson s church, in Goodman s Fields, London. Having studied at the Baptist College, Bristol, and also at an Independent Academy, in Tenter Alley, Moorfields, London, he went, in 1740, to supply the Baptist congregation at Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire; and in 1743 became their pastor. In December, 1749, he married Miss Elizabeth Boswell. On the death of Mr. Wilson, he was invited to become pastor of the church in Goodman s Fields, but he declined, and continued faithfully labouring for his flock at Bourton, to whom he preached till the time of his death in 1795. In 1770 he was made M.A. by Providence College, Rhode Island. In his hymns on affliction, he could draw on his own experience, having lost a son, an accomplished medical doctor, in 1770, and a sou by drowning, and also his own wife, in the year 1784. Pie was composing a hymn a few hours before he died, September 3, 1795.
