Immutability of God

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Great Former of this various frame

Author: Philip Doddridge
Published in 82 hymnals

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Representative Text

1 Great Former of this various frame!
Our souls adore thine awful name!
And bow and tremble, while they praise
The Ancient of eternal days.

2 Thou, Lord, with unsurprised survey,
Sawest nature rising yesterday;
And, as to-morrow, shall thine eye
See earth and stars in ruin lie.

3 Beyond an angel's vision bright,
Thou dwell'st in self-existent light,
Which shines with undiminished ray,
While suns and worlds in smoke decay.

4 Our days a transient period run,
And change with every circling sun;
And though in self or sect we trust,
A moth can crush us into dust.

Source: The Voice of Praise: a collection of hymns for the use of the Methodist Church #40

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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 >

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First Line:	Great Former of this various frame
Title:	Immutability of God
Author:	Philip Doddridge
Meter:	8.8.8.8
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Great Former of this various frame. P. Doddridge. [New Year.] This is No. 69 of the Doddridge Manuscript is dated, "Jan. 1, 1737/8," and headed, "The mutability of Creation, and the immutability of God." It was first published by J, Orton in his (posthumous) edition of Doddridge's Hymns, &c, No. 64, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines, and with the same heading; and again, with slight variations, in the text, by J. D. Humphreys, in his edition of the same, 1839, No. 67. Although in common use in Great Britain and America, it is not so popular as many of Doddridge's hymns.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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