O Holy Lord, content to live [fill]

O Holy Lord, content to live [fill]

Author: William Walsham How
Published in 46 hymnals

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Audio files: MIDI

Representative Text

1 O holy Lord, content to fill
In lowly home the lowliest place,
Thy childhood’s law a mother’s will,
Obedience meek thy brightest grace;

2 Lead every child that bears thy Name
To walk in thine own guileless way,
To dread the touch of sin and shame,
And humbly, like thyself, obey. A-men.

3 Gather thy lambs within thine arm,
And gently in thy bosom bear;
Keep them, O Lord, from hurt and harm,
And bid them rest forever there.

4 So shall they waiting here below,
Like thee their Lord, a little span,
In wisdom and in stature grow,
And favor with both God and man.

Amen.

Source: Service Book and Hymnal of the Lutheran Church in America #334

Author: William Walsham How

William W. How (b. Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England, 1823; d. Leenane, County Mayo, Ireland, 1897) studied at Wadham College, Oxford, and Durham University and was ordained in the Church of England in 1847. He served various congregations and became Suffragan Bishop in east London in 1879 and Bishop of Wakefield in 1888. Called both the "poor man's bishop" and "the children's bishop," How was known for his work among the destitute in the London slums and among the factory workers in west Yorkshire. He wrote a number of theological works about controversies surrounding the Oxford Movement and attempted to reconcile biblical creation with the theory of evolution. He was joint editor of Psalms and Hymns (1854) and Church Hymns (1871). While rec… Go to person page >

Text Information

First Line: O Holy Lord, content to live [fill]
Author: William Walsham How
Meter: 8.8.8.8
Language: English
Copyright: Public Domain

Notes

O Holy Lord, content to live [dwell —fill]. Bishop W. W. How. [A Child's Hymn.] Written in 1850, and 1st published in The Parish Choir in 1851. In 1854 it was repeated in Morrell & How's Psalms & Hymns, No. 65, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines. When included in Hymns Ancient & Modern, in 1861, considerable alterations were made in the text, and it began, "O Holy Lord, content to dwell.” This first line, but not the alterations in detail, was adopted in the enlarged edition of Morrell & How's Psalms & Hymns, 1864. For the S. P. C. K. Church Hymns, 1871, it was again rewritten, this time by Bishop How, as “O Holy Lord, content to fill." This is the author's authorised text, and is repeated in his Hymns, 1886. All these texts are in common use.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Tune

BROOKFIELD (Southgate)


ABENDS


CANONBURY

Derived from the fourth piano piece in Robert A. Schumann's Nachtstücke, Opus 23 (1839), CANONBURY first appeared as a hymn tune in J. Ireland Tucker's Hymnal with Tunes, Old and New (1872). The tune, whose title refers to a street and square in Islington, London, England, is often matched to Haver…

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The Cyber Hymnal #4980
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The Cyber Hymnal #4980

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