Unto thy death baptised

James George Deck wrote “Lord Jesus, we remember.” It is Hymn No. 149 in A Few Hymns and Some Spiritual Songs, Selected 1856, for the Little Flock (Revised 1881, London: G. Morrish, 1881).

Deck was born November 1, 1807 in Suffolk, England, the son of John and Mary Deck. He received military training, after which he served in the British East India Company. Back in England, he attended an Anglican theological college, and in 1829 married Alicia Field. She was the daughter of Samuel Field, his tutor. He left the Anglicans and joined the Plymouth Brethren, becoming a preacher and evangelist among them. After the Plymouth Brethren split of the “Exclusive Brethren” and the “Open Brethren,” Deck left England and moved to New Zealand. His wife died shortly after they settled in Wellington. In 1855, Deck remarried to Lewanna Atkinson. Deck apparently tried to avoid bringing the English schism in New Zealand, but eventually visits of his son to England, and English ministers to New Zealand made this attempt unsuccessful. He died August 14, 1884. Alicia, Lewanna, and James are buried at Pioneer Park Cemetery in Motueka, Tasman District, Tasman, New Zealand.

Deck produced a number of good hymns. They remain popular in Brethren circles, but are not well known outside of them. “Lord Jesus, we remember” is a baptismal hymn. In it, Deck alludes to Jesus’s baptism of suffering and death, and his resurrection from the dead – which are foundational to the third stanza about water baptism. The 1978 Brethren songbook Spiritual Songs sets it to the tune St. Christopher by Frederick C. Maker.

1. Lord Jesus! we remember
The travail of thy soul,
When, through thy love’s deep pity,
The waves did o’er thee roll;
Baptised in death’s dark waters,
For us thy blood was shed;
For us thou (Lord of glory)
Wast numbered with the dead.

2. O Lord! Thou now art risen,
Thy travail all is o’er;
For sin thou once hast suffered—
Thou liv’st to die no more;
Sin, death and hell are vanquished
By thee, the church’s head;
And lo! we share thy triumphs,
Thou First-born from the dead.

3. Unto thy death baptisèd,
We own with thee we died:
With thee, our Life, we’re risen,
And shall be glorified.
From sin, the world, and Satan,
We’re ransomed by thy blood,
And here would walk as strangers,
Alive with thee to God.

George Vicesimus Wigram (1805-1879), with the help of others such as William Kelly, compiled A Few Hymns and Some Spiritual Songs in 1856. To some degree it was a revision of a book he published in 1838, Hymns for the Poor of the Flock. J. N. Darby (1800-1882) revised this 1856 book in 1881.