Indulgent Sovereign of the skies

Top Media Text Author Text Info Notes Tune Timeline Page Scans Instances

Indulgent Sovereign of the skies

Author: Philip Doddridge
Tune: PARK STREET
Published in 64 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, Noteworthy Composer
Audio files: MIDI

Representative Text

1 Indulgent Sovereign of the skies,
And wilt thou bow thy gracious ear
While feeble mortals raise their cries,
Wilt thou, the great Jehovah, hear?

2 How shall thy servants give thee rest,
Till Zion's mouldering walls thou raise?
Till thine own power shall stand confess'd,
And make Jerusalem a praise?

3 Look down, O God, with pitying eye,
And view the desolation round;
See what wide realms in darkness lie,
And hurl their idols to the ground.

4 Lord, let the gospel-trumpet blow,
And call the nations from afar,
Let all the isles their Saviour know,
And earth's remotest ends draw near.

5 Let Babylon's proud altars shake,
And light invade her darkest gloom;
The yoke of iron bondage break
The yoke of Satan and of Rome.

6 On all our souls let grace descend,
Like heavenly dew in copious showers,
That we may call our God our friend,
That we may hail salvation ours.

7 Then shall each age and rank agree.
United shouts of joy to raise:
And Zion made a praise by thee,
To thee shall render back the praise.

Source: Hymns, Selected and Original: for public and private worship (1st ed.) #582

All representative texts • Compare texts ^ top

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 >

^ top

First Line:	Indulgent Sovereign of the skies
Author:	Philip Doddridge
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

Isaiah 62:6
(hymns)

^ top

Notes

Indulgent Sovereign of the skies. P. Doddridge. [Fast Day.] In the Doddridge Manuscript this hymn, No. 76, is headed "God intreated for Jerusalem. A hymn for a Fast Day, from Isa. lxii., 6, 7," and is dated "Jan. 4, 1739." It is also in the Brooke Manuscript. It was published in Doddridge's (posthumous) Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 120, in 10 stanzas of 4 lines, with the heading changed to “God intreated for Zion; Isaiah lxii., 6,7. For a Fast Day; or, A Prayer for the revival of Religion;" and repeated in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1839, No. 136. It is usually giver, in the hymn-books in an abridged form, and sometimes as "Thou glorious Sovereign of the Skies.”

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

^ top