Come, thou celestial Spirit, come

Author: Philip Doddridge

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 >

Come, Thou Celestial Spirit, come. P. Doddridge. [Whitsuntide.] This hymn is undated in the D. MSS., where it begins, "Oh come, celestial Spirit, come." It was published in the altered form by J. Orton, in Doddridge's (posthumous) Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 285, in 4 stanzas of 4 lines, and again in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1S39. In the Baptist Praise Book, N. Y., 1871, stanza iv. is omitted.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)