Gracious Spirit, Life divine

Author: John Julian

Born: Jan­u­a­ry 27, 1839, St. Ag­nes, Corn­wall. Died: Jan­u­a­ry 22, 1913, Thirsk, York­shire, Eng­land. Educated pri­vate­ly, Ju­li­an grad­u­at­ed from Dur­ham Un­i­ver­si­ty (MA 1887), Lam­beth (DD 1894), and How­ard Un­i­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton, DC (LLD 1894). He took Ho­ly Or­ders in 1866, and served as Vi­car of Win­co­bank (1876-1905) and Vi­car of Top­cliff, York­shire (1905-). How­ev­er, he is best known as a hymn­ol­o­gist. The stand­ard ref­er­ence work in this field is his ma­ssive Dic­tion­ary of Hym­nol­o­gy: Or­i­gin and His­to­ry of Chris­tian Hymns and Hymn­writ­ers of All Ag­es and Na­tions, To­ge­ther with Bi­o­graph­ic­al and Cri­ti­cal No­tice… Go to person page >

Gracious Spirit, Life Divine. J. Julian. [Whitsuntide.] Written by request for Pawson and Brailsford's Sheffield Whitsuntide Hymns, 1900, in 4 stanzas of 4 lines. From this it has passed into the S.P.C.K. Church Hymns, 1903, and several other collections in G. Britain and America, and is extensively used at Whitsuntide gatherings. Its original tune is "St. Margaret," by E. H. Lemare, sometime organist of St. Margaret's, Westminster.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)