The Excellency of Scripture

Representative Text

1. Father of mercies, in your Word
What endless glory shine!
Forever be your name adored
For these celestial lines.

2. Here may the lost and hungry come,
And light and food receive;
Here shall the lowest guest have room,
And taste, and see, and live.

3. Here springs of consolation rise
To cheer the fainting mind,
And thirsty souls receive supplies,
And sweet refreshment find.

4. Divine Instructor, gracious Lord,
Please be forever near,
Teach me to love your sacred Word,
And view my Savior there.

Source: Hymns and Devotions for Daily Worship #328

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Author: Anne Steele

Anne Steele was the daughter of Particular Baptist preacher and timber merchant William Steele. She spent her entire life in Broughton, Hampshire, near the southern coast of England, and devoted much of her time to writing. Some accounts of her life portray her as a lonely, melancholy invalid, but a revival of research in the last decade indicates that she had been more active and social than what was previously thought. She was theologically conversant with Dissenting ministers and "found herself at the centre of a literary circle that included family members from various generations, as well as local literati." She chose a life of singleness to focus on her craft. Before Christmas in 1742, she declined a marriage proposal from contemporar… Go to person page >

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First Line:	Father of mercies, in Thy word
Title:	The Excellency of Scripture
Author:	Anne Steele (1760)
Meter:	8.6.8.6
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

Year A, Ordinary Time, Proper 10 (15)

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Father of mercies, in Thy word. Anne Steele. [Holy Scripture.] First published in her Poems on Subjects chiefly Devotional, 1760, vol. i. p. 58, in 12 stanzas of 4 lines, repeated in the enlarged edition, 1780, and in Sedgwick's reprint of her Hymns, 1863, p. 36. In 1769, Ash & Evans gave a selection of 6 stanzas in their Bristol Baptist Collection, No. 79, and from this arrangement mainly the well-known hymn is taken. It is in extensive use in Great Britain and America, and is one of the most popular of Miss Steele's hymns.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Notes

Father of mercies, in Thy word. Anne Steele. [Holy Scripture.] First published in her Poems on Subjects chiefly Devotional, 1760, vol. i. p. 58, in 12 stanzas of 4 lines, repeated in the enlarged edition, 1780, and in Sedgwick's reprint of her Hymns, 1863, p. 36. In 1769, Ash & Evans gave a selection of 6 stanzas in their Bristol Baptist Collection, No. 79, and from this arrangement mainly the well-known hymn is taken. It is in extensive use in Great Britain and America, and is one of the most popular of Miss Steele's hymns.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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Tune

BEATITUDO

Composed by John B. Dykes (PHH 147), BEATITUDO was published in the revised edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern (1875), where it was set to Isaac Watts' "How Bright Those Glorious Spirits Shine." Originally a word coined by Cicero, BEATITUDO means "the condition of blessedness." Like many of Dykes's…

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