Repairing to Christ, the Fountain of Life

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 >

Hail, everlasting Spring. P. Doddridge. The Living Fountain.] This hymn, based on Zech. xiii. 1, is dated in the Doddridge Manuscript " Nov. 7, 1736." It was first published in J. Orton's edition of Doddridge's (posthumous) Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 170, in 3 stanzas of 8 lines, and again in J. p. Humphrey's edition of the same, 1839, No. 191, and in each case without alteration. In Hymns & Songs of Praise, N. Y., 1874, No. 515, it is given unaltered and in full. Elliott, in his Psalms & Hymns, 1835, No. 83, attributes the hymn to "Dodd," and this has been quoted as the author's name. It is simply a contraction of "Doddridge."

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)