Edward Mote was a Baptist preacher and hymn writer. His best-known hymn is this one – The Solid Rock. It begins with the first line “My hope is built on nothing less,” originally titled “The Immutable Basis for a Sinner’s Hope.” The hymn idea is based on the Parable of the Wise and the Foolish Builders (Matthew 7:24-27). Sometimes it appears with the title “Jesus All in All.”
Edward Mote was born in London, England January 21, 1797. A cabinet maker by trade, he pastored the Rehoboth Baptist Church in Horsham, West Sussex for 26 years (from 1848 till his death in 1874). This church still exists and is a member of the Association of Grace Baptist Churches (South East).
Henry Burrage quotes Mote as saying of his youth “My Sabbaths were spent in the streets at play. So ignorant was I that I did not know there was a God.” (Baptist Hymn Writers and Their Hymns, p. 156)
In Memoirs of the Principal Hymn-Writers (1870), John Gadsby relays Mote’s experience in Mote’s own words.
“I went to a school where no Bible was allowed; so that I was totally ignorant of the word of life when I entered that place of worship; but though I knew not the letter of the law, the Holy Ghost brought the spiritual contents of it into my conscience that morning. For two years that dart was in my liver, till extracted by Calvary’s blood, under a sermon by Mr. Bennett, of Birmingham, who was on a visit to London, one Good Friday morning, from ‘The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all,’ and from that auspicious hour to the present, precious blood has been the solace of my mind.”
There existed in the past some confusion on the authorship of the hymn. It had appeared in Rees’ collection of hymns, and thereafter was often simply credited to “Rees.” In 1852, Mote wrote to The Gospel Herald and related the hymn’s origin.
“One morning it came into my mind as I went to labour, to write an hymn on the ‘Gracious Experience of a Christian.’ As I went up Holborn I had the chorus,
‘On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand.’“In the day I had four first verses complete, and wrote them off. On the Sabbath following I met brother King as I came out of Lisle Street Meeting (who was for many years a deacon of brother Coombs), who informed me that his wife was very ill, and asked me to call and see her. I had an early tea, and called afterwards. He said that it was his usual custom to sing a hymn, read a portion, and engage in prayer, before he went to meeting. He looked for his hymn book, but could find it no where. I said, ‘I have some verses in my pocket; if he liked, we would sing them.’ We did; and his wife enjoyed them so much, that after service he asked me, as a favour, to have a copy of them for his wife. I went home and by the fireside composed the last two verses, wrote the whole off, and took them to sister King, and visited her every day after tea, while she lived (five or six days); and never had more heavenly converse with a saint of God than in those heavenly, heart-replenishing visits, we mutually rejoiced in the great things of God.
“As those verses so met the dying woman’s case, my attention to them was the more arrested, and I had a thousand printed for distribution. I sent one to the Spiritual Magazine, without my initials, which appeared some time after this. Brother Rees of Crown Street, Soho, brought out an edition of hymns, and this hymn was in it. David Denham introduced it with Rees’s name, and others after.” (“Letters to the Editor,” The Gospel Herald, or Poor Christian’s Magazine, Volume XX, 1852, p. 285)
This hymn was included by Edward Mote in his Hymns of Praise. A New Selection of Gospel Hymns, combining all the Excellencies of our spiritual Poets, with many Originals (London. J. Nichols, 1836). The original hymns included is this work number nearly 100, among a total of 606 hymns.
In his declining days of health, Mote said, “The truths I have preached I am now living upon; and they will do to die upon.” (p. 157) Edward Mote died November 13, 1874, and is buried in the Rehoboth churchyard. According to the online church history, his dying words were “Precious blood, precious blood, that makes peace with God.”
The words on a tablet honoring Edward Mote in the Rehoboth chapel include: For 26 years the beloved pastor of this church, preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified, as all the sinner can need, and all the saint can desire.
The tune for The Solid Rock was composed by William Bradbury in 1863. The words appear in most songbooks commonly in the following form.
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand:
All other ground is sinking sand.
2. When darkness veils his lovely face,
I rest on his unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand:
All other ground is sinking sand.
3. His oath, his covenant, his blood,
Support me in the whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand:
All other ground is sinking sand.
4. When he shall come with trumpet sound,
O may I then in him be found:
Dressed in his righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand:
All other ground is sinking sand.
The current form varies slightly from Mote’s original, which I believe included some of the following material. It is my understanding (though I have not located a first printing to check), that “Nor earth, nor hell my soul can move” was originally the first line of this hymn.
I rest upon unchanging love;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
‘Midst all the hell I feel within,
On his completed work I lean.
I trust his righteous character,
His council, promise, and his pow’r;
His honour and his name’s at stake,
To save me from the burning lake.
When I shall launch in worlds unseen,
O may I then be found in him,
Dressed in his righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.
This, of course, included the refrain “On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand: All other ground is sinking sand.” In my estimation The Solid Rock is one of the “top shelf” great hymns of the Christian faith.
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