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Jesus, Where'er Your People Meet

Author: William Cowper Meter: 8.8.8.8 Appears in 515 hymnals Scripture: Matthew 18:20 First Line: Jesus, where e'er your people meet Lyrics: 1 Jesus, where'er your people meet, There they behold your mercy-seat; Where'er they seek you, you are found, And ev'ry place is hallowed ground. 2 For you, within no walls confined, Are dwelling in the humble mind; Such ever bring you where they come, And going, take you to their home. 3 Dear Shepherd of your chosen few, Your former mercies here renew; Here to our waiting hearts proclaim The sweetness of your saving Name. 4 Here may we prove the pow'r of prayer To strengthen faith and sweeten care, To teach our faint desires to rise, And bring all heav'n before our eyes. 5 Lord, we are few, but you are near; Nor short your arm, nor deaf your ear; O rend the heav'ns, come quickly down, And make a thousand hearts your own. Topics: Election; The Church The Lord's House; Christ Abiding with Believers Used With Tune: WARRINGTON

Draw Us in the Spirit's Tether

Author: Percy Dearmer, 1867-1936 Meter: 8.7.8.7.8.7 Appears in 24 hymnals Scripture: Matthew 18:20 Topics: Holy Communion Used With Tune: UNION SEMINARY

To be sung between Prayer and Sermaon

Author: Dr. S. Stennett Meter: 8.8.8.8 Appears in 246 hymnals Scripture: Matthew 18:20 First Line: There two or three, with sweet accord Lyrics: 1 There two or three, with sweet accord, Obedient to their sovereign Lord, Meet to recount his acts of grace, And offer solemn prayer and praise; 2 "There," says the Savior, "will I be, "Amid this little company; "To them unveil my smiling face, "And shed My glories round the place." 3 We meet at thy command, dear Lord, Relying on thy faithful word: Now send thy spirit from above, Now fill our hearts with heavenly love. Topics: Worship Hymns Before Sermon; Presence of God promised; Public Religion

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Tunes

Tune authorities

UNION SEMINARY

Meter: 8.7.8.7.8.7 Appears in 24 hymnals Composer and/or Arranger: Harold Friedell, 1905-1958 Scripture: Matthew 18:20 Tune Key: G Major Incipit: 35612 16555 11432 Used With Text: Draw Us in the Spirit's Tether

WARRINGTON

Meter: 8.8.8.8 Appears in 178 hymnals Composer and/or Arranger: Ralph Harrison Scripture: Matthew 18:20 Tune Key: A Major Incipit: 55435 11271 32232 Used With Text: Jesus, Where'er Your People Meet

JESU TAWA PANO

Meter: 6.6.6.9 Appears in 29 hymnals Composer and/or Arranger: Patrick Matsikenyiri, 20th cent. Scripture: Matthew 18:20 Tune Key: E Major Incipit: 31332 24244 33 Used With Text: Jesu, tawa pano (Jesus, we are here)

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Instances

Published text-tune combinations (hymns) from specific hymnals

Blest Be the Tie That Binds

Author: John Fawcett Hymnal: Glory to God #306 (2013) Meter: 6.6.8.6 Scripture: Matthew 18:20 Lyrics: 1 Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love. The fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above. 2 Before our *Father's throne we pour our ardent prayers. Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, our comforts and our cares. 3 We share our mutual woes; our mutual burdens bear. And often for each other flows the sympathizing tear. 4 When we are called to part, it gives us inward pain; but we shall still be joined in heart, and hope to meet again. 5 From sorrow, toil, and pain, and sin we shall be free; and perfect love and friendship reign through all eternity. * Or "Maker's" Topics: The Church; Community in Christ; Dying in Christ; Eternal Life; Funeral; Lord's Supper; Prayer; Unity; Unity Languages: English Tune Title: DENNIS

Come, Thou Almighty King

Author: Anonymous Hymnal: Worship the Lord #40 (1989) Meter: 6.6.4.6.6.6.4 Scripture: Matthew 18:20 Topics: God Praise to God Tune Title: ITALIAN HYMN

"Where two or three meet in my name, I shall be there with them."

Hymnal: Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal #876 (1985) Scripture: Matthew 18:20 Topics: Calls to Worship

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People

Authors, composers, editors, etc.

Anonymous

Scripture: Matthew 18:20 Author of "As Your Family, Lord, Meet Us Here" in Worship and Rejoice In some hymnals, the editors noted that a hymn's author is unknown to them, and so this artificial "person" entry is used to reflect that fact. Obviously, the hymns attributed to "Author Unknown" "Unknown" or "Anonymous" could have been written by many people over a span of many centuries.

William Cowper

1731 - 1800 Scripture: Matthew 18:20 Author of "Jesus, Where'er Your People Meet" in Trinity Hymnal (Rev. ed.) William Cowper (pronounced "Cooper"; b. Berkampstead, Hertfordshire, England, 1731; d. East Dereham, Norfolk, England, 1800) is regarded as one of the best early Romantic poets. To biographers he is also known as "mad Cowper." His literary talents produced some of the finest English hymn texts, but his chronic depression accounts for the somber tone of many of those texts. Educated to become an attorney, Cowper was called to the bar in 1754 but never practiced law. In 1763 he had the opportunity to become a clerk for the House of Lords, but the dread of the required public examination triggered his tendency to depression, and he attempted suicide. His subsequent hospitalization and friendship with Morley and Mary Unwin provided emotional stability, but the periods of severe depression returned. His depression was deepened by a religious bent, which often stressed the wrath of God, and at times Cowper felt that God had predestined him to damnation. For the last two decades of his life Cowper lived in Olney, where John Newton became his pastor. There he assisted Newton in his pastoral duties, and the two collaborated on the important hymn collection Olney Hymns (1779), to which Cowper contributed sixty-eight hymn texts. Bert Polman ============ Cowper, William, the poet. The leading events in the life of Cowper are: born in his father's rectory, Berkhampstead, Nov. 26, 1731; educated at Westminster; called to the Bar, 1754; madness, 1763; residence at Huntingdon, 1765; removal to Olney, 1768; to Weston, 1786; to East Dereham, 1795; death there, April 25, 1800. The simple life of Cowper, marked chiefly by its innocent recreations and tender friendships, was in reality a tragedy. His mother, whom he commemorated in the exquisite "Lines on her picture," a vivid delineation of his childhood, written in his 60th year, died when he was six years old. At his first school he was profoundly wretched, but happier at Westminster; excelling at cricket and football, and numbering Warren Hastings, Colman, and the future model of his versification. Churchill, among his contemporaries or friends. Destined for the Bar, he was articled to a solicitor, along with Thurlow. During this period he fell in love with his cousin, Theodora Cowper, sister to Lady Hesketh, and wrote love poems to her. The marriage was forbidden by her father, but she never forgot him, and in after years secretly aided his necessities. Fits of melancholy, from which he had suffered in school days, began to increase, as he entered on life, much straitened in means after his father's death. But on the whole, it is the playful, humorous side of him that is most prominent in the nine years after his call to the Bar; spent in the society of Colman, Bonnell Thornton, and Lloyd, and in writing satires for The Connoisseur and St. James's Chronicle and halfpenny ballads. Then came the awful calamity, which destroyed all hopes of distinction, and made him a sedentary invalid, dependent on his friends. He had been nominated to the Clerkship of the Journals of the House of Lords, but the dread of appearing before them to show his fitness for the appointment overthrew his reason. He attempted his life with "laudanum, knife and cord,"—-in the third attempt nearly succeeding. The dark delusion of his life now first showed itself—a belief in his reprobation by God. But for the present, under the wise and Christian treatment of Dr. Cotton (q. v.) at St. Albans, it passed away; and the eight years that followed, of which the two first were spent at Huntingdon (where he formed his lifelong friendship with Mrs. Unwin), and the remainder at Olney in active piety among the poor, and enthusiastic devotions under the guidance of John Newton (q. v.), were full of the realisation of God's favour, and the happiest, most lucid period of his life. But the tension of long religious exercises, the nervous excitement of leading at prayer meetings, and the extreme despondence (far more than the Calvinism) of Newton, could scarcely have been a healthy atmosphere for a shy, sensitive spirit, that needed most of all the joyous sunlight of Christianity. A year after his brother's death, madness returned. Under the conviction that it was the command of God, he attempted suicide; and he then settled down into a belief in stark contradiction to his Calvinistic creed, "that the Lord, after having renewed him in holiness, had doomed him to everlasting perdition" (Southey). In its darkest form his affliction lasted sixteen months, during which he chiefly resided in J. Newton's house, patiently tended by him and by his devoted nurse, Mrs. Unwin. Gradually he became interested in carpentering, gardening, glazing, and the tendance of some tame hares and other playmates. At the close of 1780, Mrs. Unwin suggested to him some serious poetical work; and the occupation proved so congenial, that his first volume was published in 1782. To a gay episode in 1783 (his fascination by the wit of Lady Austen) his greatest poem, The Task, and also John Gilpin were owing. His other principal work was his Homer, published in 1791. The dark cloud had greatly lifted from his life when Lady Hesketh's care accomplished his removal to Weston (1786): but the loss of his dear friend William Unwin lowered it again for some months. The five years' illness of Mrs. Unwin, during which his nurse of old became his tenderly-watched patient, deepened the darkness more and more. And her death (1796) brought “fixed despair," of which his last poem, The Castaway, is the terrible memorial. Perhaps no more beautiful sentence has been written of him, than the testimony of one, who saw him after death, that with the "composure and calmness" of the face there “mingled, as it were, a holy surprise." Cowper's poetry marks the dawn of the return from the conventionality of Pope to natural expression, and the study of quiet nature. His ambition was higher than this, to be the Bard of Christianity. His great poems show no trace of his monomania, and are full of healthy piety. His fame as a poet is less than as a letter-writer: the charm of his letters is unsurpassed. Though the most considerable poet, who has written hymns, he has contributed little to the development of their structure, adopting the traditional modes of his time and Newton's severe canons. The spiritual ideas of the hymns are identical with Newton's: their highest note is peace and thankful contemplation, rather than joy: more than half of them are full of trustful or reassuring faith: ten of them are either submissive (44), self-reproachful (17, 42, 43), full of sad yearning (1, 34), questioning (9), or dark spiritual conflict (38-40). The specialty of Cowper's handling is a greater plaintiveness, tenderness, and refinement. A study of these hymns as they stood originally under the classified heads of the Olney Hymns, 1779, which in some cases probably indicate the aim of Cowper as well as the ultimate arrangement of the book by Newton, shows that one or two hymns were more the history of his conversion, than transcripts of present feelings; and the study of Newton's hymns in the same volume, full of heavy indictment against the sins of his own regenerate life, brings out the peculiar danger of his friendship to the poet: it tends also to modify considerably the conclusions of Southey as to the signs of incipient madness in Cowper's maddest hymns. Cowper's best hymns are given in The Book of Praise by Lord Selborne. Two may be selected from them; the exquisitely tender "Hark! my soul, it is the Lord" (q. v.), and "Oh, for a closer walk with God" (q. v.). Anyone who knows Mrs. Browning's noble lines on Cowper's grave will find even a deeper beauty in the latter, which is a purely English hymn of perfect structure and streamlike cadence, by connecting its sadness and its aspiration not only with the “discord on the music" and the "darkness on the glory," but the rapture of his heavenly waking beneath the "pathetic eyes” of Christ. Authorities. Lives, by Hayley; Grimshaw; Southey; Professor Goldwin Smith; Mr. Benham (attached to Globe Edition); Life of Newton, by Rev. Josiah Bull; and the Olney Hymns. The numbers of the hymns quoted refer to the Olney Hymns. [Rev. H. Leigh Bennett, M.A.] --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907) ================ Cowper, W. , p. 265, i. Other hymns are:— 1. Holy Lord God, I love Thy truth. Hatred of Sin. 2. I was a grovelling creature once. Hope and Confidence. 3. No strength of nature can suffice. Obedience through love. 4. The Lord receives His highest praise. Faith. 5. The saints should never be dismayed. Providence. All these hymns appeared in the Olney Hymns, 1779. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907) ===================== Cowper, W., p. 265, i. Prof. John E. B. Mayor, of Cambridge, contributed some letters by Cowper, hitherto unpublished, together with notes thereon, to Notes and Queries, July 2 to Sept. 24, 1904. These letters are dated from Huntingdon, where he spent two years after leaving St. Alban's (see p. 265, i.), and Olney. The first is dated "Huntingdon, June 24, 1765," and the last "From Olney, July 14, 1772." They together with extracts from other letters by J. Newton (dated respectively Aug. 8, 1772, Nov. 4, 1772), two quotations without date, followed by the last in the N. & Q. series, Aug. 1773, are of intense interest to all students of Cowper, and especially to those who have given attention to the religious side of the poet's life, with its faint lights and deep and awful shadows. From the hymnological standpoint the additional information which we gather is not important, except concerning the hymns "0 for a closer walk with God," "God moves in a mysterious way," "Tis my happiness below," and "Hear what God, the Lord, hath spoken." Concerning the last three, their position in the manuscripts, and the date of the last from J. Newton in the above order, "Aug. 1773," is conclusive proof against the common belief that "God moves in a mysterious way" was written as the outpouring of Cowper's soul in gratitude for the frustration of his attempted suicide in October 1773. --John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)

John L. Bell

b. 1949 Person Name: John L. Bell, b. 1949 Scripture: Matthew 18:20 Author of "The God of All Eternity" in Gather Comprehensive John Bell (b. 1949) was born in the Scottish town of Kilmarnock in Ayrshire, intending to be a music teacher when he felt the call to the ministry. But in frustration with his classes, he did volunteer work in a deprived neighborhood in London for a time and also served for two years as an associate pastor at the English Reformed Church in Amsterdam. After graduating he worked for five years as a youth pastor for the Church of Scotland, serving a large region that included about 500 churches. He then took a similar position with the Iona Community, and with his colleague Graham Maule, began to broaden the youth ministry to focus on renewal of the church’s worship. His approach soon turned to composing songs within the identifiable traditions of hymnody that began to address concerns missing from the current Scottish hymnal: "I discovered that seldom did our hymns represent the plight of poor people to God. There was nothing that dealt with unemployment, nothing that dealt with living in a multicultural society and feeling disenfranchised. There was nothing about child abuse…,that reflected concern for the developing world, nothing that helped see ourselves as brothers and sisters to those who are suffering from poverty or persecution." [from an interview in Reformed Worship (March 1993)] That concern not only led to writing many songs, but increasingly to introducing them internationally in many conferences, while also gathering songs from around the world. He was convener for the fourth edition of the Church of Scotland’s Church Hymnary (2005), a very different collection from the previous 1973 edition. His books, The Singing Thing and The Singing Thing Too, as well as the many collections of songs and worship resources produced by John Bell—some together with other members of the Iona Community’s “Wild Goose Resource Group,” —are available in North America from GIA Publications. Emily Brink

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