Samuel Sebastian Wesley, grandson of hymn-writer Charles Wesley and son of Sebastian Wesley, a celebrated organist though socially ostracised for leaving his wife for a servant, served four cathedrals and provided original and stimulating music for services.

His verse anthem Blessed be the God and Father has precedents beyond his own earlier works in the verse-anthem format – though it has been argued that it has more in common with short scenes in opera than previous English cathedral music.

Certainly it has dramatic elements and full participation of the organ (as opposed to ‘mere’ accompaniment) in the excitement of the effect. The sections of the work are fairly distinct and demarkated; his text taken largely from the first chapter of 1 Peter is adapted to his purposes and taken from different parts of that chapter, re-ordered and lightly altered.

I have taken the title for this post from what I take to be the fourth such section, in which a soprano (treble) soloist exhorts people to ‘love one another with a pure heart fervently’ affirmed by the chorus echoing ‘see that ye love one another’; this is set in the context of the incorruptible life of the Resurrection: the first section, a homophonic chorus, blesses God for confirming our hope ‘by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’.

Lower voices then affirm the ‘inheritance incorruptible’ in response to which higher voices call for Christians to be holy in living, as God who calls us is holy: that is how and why we must love one another. After this, lower voices reflect on the fragility and fleetingness of life, before a triumphant fugue contrast that temporality with the eternal endurance of the word of the Lord.

Returning to that exhortation to love, I discovered relatively recently that in an earlier draft the soloist’s four bar exhortation was balanced by a similar four bar response; the final form of the work, with a three bar response is less classical in measure, but more satisfying, and clearly text-driven.

While we continue to live as Easter people, we must allow ourselves to be taken off balance sometimes; to enjoy living in the faith and express that joy in worship; to know that our expectations of ourselves and each other fall short of God’s expectations for us and therefore are not the measure to rely on.