Ethelbert William Bullinger

Ethelbert William Bullinger was born in Canterbury, England, on December 15, 1837, and died in London on June 6, 1913. Educated at King’s College London, he became an Anglican priest, biblical scholar, singer, organist, and composer. He was ordained priest in 1862, served several curacies, and became vicar of St. Stephen’s, Walthamstow, in 1874. From 1867 until his death, apart from periods of illness, he was clerical secretary of the Trinitarian Bible Society. His work there included Bible translation and distribution projects, while his later publications included A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible, and editorial work on The Companion Bible.

Bullinger published Fifty Original Hymn-Tunes in London in 1874. Its opening melody became known as BULLINGER and circulated widely with several texts, especially Frances Ridley Havergal’s I Am Trusting Thee, Lord Jesus. The tune existed about twenty-six years before Charles Albert Dickinson wrote Blessed Master, I Have Promised, so Bullinger did not compose it for Dickinson’s words. The earliest located pairing is no. 20 in The Endeavor Hymnal of 1901, and later American hymnals continued the association. Hymnary catalogs BULLINGER in A-flat major, with an incipit of 56513 26765 11326, and identifies both the original tune and Dickinson’s text as public domain.