1 All-powerful, self-existent God,
Who all creation dost sustain!
Thou wast, and art, and art to come;
And everlasting is Thy reign.
2 Fix'd and eternal as Thy days,
Each glorious attribute divine,
Thro' ages infinite, shall still
With undiminish'd lustre shine.
3 Fountain of being! Source of good!
Immutable dost Thou remain;
Nor can the shadow of a change
Obscure the glories of Thy reign.
4 Earth may with all her powers dissolve,
If such the great Creator's will;
But Thou for ever art the same;
"I Am" is Thy memorial still.
Source: Book of Worship (Rev. ed.) #56
First Line: | All-powerful, self-existent God |
Meter: | 8.8.8.8 |
Source: | Walker's Collection |
Language: | English |
Copyright: | Public Domain |
All powerful, self-existent God. [God unchangeable.] Published anonymously in B. Williams's Collection of Hymns for Public Worship on the General Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion, Salisbury, 1778, No. 3, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines and headed "The Immortality of God." It is based on Ps. cii. v. 27. In 1781 it was also included in his Book of Psalms, Salisb., p. 286, as version vi. of Ps. cii. After passing through several Unitarian Collections, it appeared in Longfellow and Johnson's American Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, No. 80, in 3 stanzas, being st. i., iii., and vi. of the original in an altered form. [William T. Brooke]
-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)