1 Great Lord of Angels! we adore
The grace that builds thy courts below;
And, 'midst ten thousand sons of light
Stoops to regard what mortals do!
2 Amidst the wastes of time and death,
Successive pastors thou dost raise,
Thy kingdom and thy truth to spread,
And form a people for thy praise.
3 At length, dismiss'd from feeble clay,
Thy servants join th'angelic band,
With them through distant worlds they fly,
With them before thy presence stand.
4 O blest employment! glorious hope!
Sweet lenitive of grief and care!
hen shall we reach those radiant courts,
And all their joys and honours share?
5 Yet while these labours we pursue,
Tho' distant from thy heav'nly throne,
Give us a zeal and love like theirs,
And half their heav'n shall here be known.
Source: Hymns, Selected and Original: for public and private worship (1st ed.) #568
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 >
My Starred Hymns
My FlexScores
My Hymnals
My Purchased Files