Children of the Lord

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Do no sinful action

Author: Cecil Frances Alexander
Published in 94 hymnals

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Representative Text

1 Do no sinful action,
speak no angry word;
ye belong to Jesus,
children of the Lord.

2 Christ is kind and gentle,
Christ is pure and true;
and his little children
must be holy too.

3 There’s a wicked spirit
watching round you still,
and he tries to tempt you
to all harm and ill.

4 But ye must not hear him,
though ’tis hard for you
to resist the evil,
and the good to do.

5 For ye promised truly,
in your infant days,
to renounce him wholly,
and forsake his ways.

6 Ye are new-born Christians
ye must learn to fight
with the bad within you,
and to do the right.

7 Christ is your own Master,
he is good and true,
and his little children
must be holy too.

Source: CPWI Hymnal #645a

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Author: Cecil Frances Alexander

As a small girl, Cecil Frances Humphries (b. Redcross, County Wicklow, Ireland, 1818; Londonderry, Ireland, 1895) wrote poetry in her school's journal. In 1850 she married Rev. William Alexander, who later became the Anglican primate (chief bishop) of Ireland. She showed her concern for disadvantaged people by traveling many miles each day to visit the sick and the poor, providing food, warm clothes, and medical supplies. She and her sister also founded a school for the deaf. Alexander was strongly influenced by the Oxford Movement and by John Keble's Christian Year. Her first book of poetry, Verses for Seasons, was a "Christian Year" for children. She wrote hymns based on the Apostles' Creed, baptism, the Lord's Supper, the Ten Commandment… Go to person page >

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First Line:	Do no sinful action
Title:	Children of the Lord
Author:	Cecil Frances Alexander
Meter:	6.5.6.5
Language:	English
Refrain First Line:	Christ is kind and gentle
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Do no sinful action. C. F. Alexander, nee Humphreys. [Children to be Christ-like.] Appeared in her Hymns for Little Children, 1848, No. 5, on "The first promise. To renounce the devil and all his works," in 7 stanzas of 4 lines. It is in Mrs. Brock's Children’s Hymn Book, No. 232, Common Praise, and others.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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