Behold with pleasing extacy. P. Doddridge. [Missions.] This hymn is No. 48 in the D. MSS., and dated "Oct. 30, 1737." It was published in Job Orton's edition of Doddridge's (posthumous) Hymns, 1755, No. 121, in 7 stanzas of 4 lines, in a slightly different form, and entitled “A Nation born in a day; or the rapid progress of the Gospel desired", Is. lxvi. 8, and again in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1839. In its original form it has not come into common use: but stanzas iv. and v., beginning, "Awake, all conquering arm, awake," very slightly altered, were given in the American Baptist Psalmist, 1813, No. 857. Also in Spurgeon's Our Own Hymn Book, 1866, No. 962.
-- 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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