Great God of Abraham! hear our prayer

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Great God of Abraham! hear our prayer

Author: Thomas Cotterill (1819)
Tune: DEPAUW
Published in 4 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, MusicXML
Audio files: MIDI

Representative Text

1. Great God of Abraham! hear our prayer
Let Abraham’s seed Thy mercy share;
O may they now at length return,
And look on Him they pierced, and mourn.

2. Remember Jacob’s flock of old;
Bring home the wanderers to Thy fold;
Remember too Thy promised word,
Israel at last shall seek the Lord.

3. Though outcasts still, estranged from Thee,
Cut off from their own olive tree;
Why should they longer such remain?
For Thou canst graft them in again.

4. Lord, put Thy law within their hearts,
And write it in their inward parts;
The veil of darkness rend in two,
Which hides Messiah from their view.

5. Oh! haste the day, foretold so long,
When Jew and Greek, a glorious throng,
One house shall seek, one prayer shall pour,
And one Redeemer shall adore!

Source: The Cyber Hymnal #2022

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Author: Thomas Cotterill

Thomas Cotterill (b. Cannock, Staffordshire, England, 1779; d. Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, 1823) studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, England, and became an Anglican clergyman. A central figure in the dispute about the propriety of singing hymns, Cotterill published a popular collection of hymns (including many of his own as well as alterations of other hymns), Selection of Psalms and Hymns in 1810. But when he tried to introduce a later edition of this book in Sheffield in 1819, his congregation protested. Many believed strongly that the Church of England should maintain its tradition of exclusive psalm singing. In a church court the Archbishop of York and Cotterill reached a compromise: the later edition of Selection was withdrawn… Go to person page >

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Text Information

Text Information

First Line:	Great God of Abraham! hear our prayer
Author:	Thomas Cotterill (1819)
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Great God of Abraham, hear our prayer. T. Cotterill. [For the Conversion of the Jews.] First published in the 8th edition of his Selection, 1819, No. 242, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines, and headed, "For the conversion of the Jews." It was repeated in the 9th edition, 1820, and all subsequent reprints of that edition. It is in many modern hymn-books, although it is not so popular as of old; and in several it is ascribed to "Davies," an error which appeared in Bickersteth's Christian Psalmody, 1833.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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