House of our God, with cheerful anthems ring. P. Doddridge. [New Year.] First published in Job Orton's posthumous edition of Doddridge's Hymns, 1755, No. 67, in 6 stanzas of 6 lines; and again in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1839, No. 81. In Brown-Borthwick's Select Hymns for the Church & Home, 1871, and in the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge Church Hymns, 1871, is a cento beginning "House of our God, with hymns of gladness ring," which is mainly from this hymn. It is by J. Ellerton. The lines chosen are greatly varied from Doddridge, and stanza v. lines 2-4 are by Mr. Ellerton.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
Philip Doddridge (b. London, England, 1702; d. Lisbon, Portugal, 1751) belonged to the Non-conformist Church (not associated with the Church of England). Its members were frequently the focus of discrimination. Offered an education by a rich patron to prepare him for ordination in the Church of England, Doddridge chose instead to remain in the Non-conformist Church. For twenty years he pastored a poor parish in Northampton, where he opened an academy for training Non-conformist ministers and taught most of the subjects himself. Doddridge suffered from tuberculosis, and when Lady Huntington, one of his patrons, offered to finance a trip to Lisbon for his health, he is reputed to have said, "I can as well go to heaven from Lisbon as from Nort… Go to person page >
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