How gracious and how wise

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How gracious and how wise

Author: Philip Doddridge
Tune: SHAWMUT (Mason)
Published in 48 hymnals

Representative Text

1 How gracious and how wise
Is our chastising God!
And O! how rich the blessings are,
That blossom from his rod!

2 He lifts it up on high,
With pity in his heart;
That ev'ry stroke his children feel
May grace and peace impart.

3 Instruct thus, they bow
And own his sov'reign sway;
They turn their erring footsteps back
To his forsaken way.

4 His cov'nant love they seek,
And seek the happy bands
that closer still engage their hearts,
To honour his commands.

5 Submissive, Lord! we yield
To discipline divine,
And bless the pains that make us still
More uniformly thine.

Source: A Collection of Hymns and A Liturgy: for the use of Evangelical Lutheran Churches; to which are added prayers for families and individuals #459

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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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