'Come, ye souls by sin afflicted'. We sang that at least three times at Limehouse, as my annotated Anglican Hymn Book reveals; the last occasion being in 1984, a year of some personal affliction for me. It is a hymn found in other discerning books from Congregational Praise to Christian Hymns, among those still in use.
Whom were we addressing? Probably ourselves and one another; unlike Joseph Hart's marginally earlier 'Come ye sinners, poor and needy' (also in AHB) which made good preaching but not good singing. The one we did sing encapsulates some gospel Scriptures rare in hymns: 'Blessed are the eyes that see him' and so on. But the hymns came to life again as a precious part of local history.
Local colour
History used to be kings and queens, good and bad, and battles long ago. '1066 and All That' had most of it. For today's juniors it is now often more subversive than that; what bombs really do, who they fall on and why. And for adults, one big growth industry (alongside family trees) is history in its local variety; pre-war poverty, trams and trolley buses, air-raid shelters and ration books. Don't ever dream of throwing out those old copies of The Eagle.
