Head of the Church

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Jesus, I sing Thy matchless grace

Author: Philip Doddridge
Published in 49 hymnals

Representative Text

1 Jesus, I sing thy matchless grace,
That calls a worm thy own;
Gives me among thy saints a place
To make thy glories known.

2 Allied to thee our vital head,
We act, and grow, and thrive:
Form thee divided, each is dead,
When most he seems alive.

3 Thy saints on earth, and those above,
Here join in sweet accord:
One body all in mutual love,
And thou, our common Lord.

4 O may my faith each hour derive
Thy spirit with delight;
While death and hell in vain shall strive
This bond to disunite.

5 Thou the whole body wilt present
Before thy Father's face;
Nor shall a wrinkle or a spot
Its beauteous form disgrace.

Source: A Selection of Hymns: from the best authors, intended to be an appendix to Dr. Watt's psalms and hymns. (1st Am. ed.) #CLXXII

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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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First Line:	Jesus, I sing Thy matchless grace
Title:	Head of the Church
Author:	Philip Doddridge
Meter:	8.6.8.6
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

Ephesians 4:15-16
(hymns)

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Notes

Jesus, I sing Thy matchless grace. P. Doddridge. [Jesus, the Head of the Church.] This hymn begins in the Doddridge Manuscript, "Jesus, I own Thy matchless grace." It is entitled "Christ our Head” and is undated. It was given with the first line as above in J. Orton's posthumous edition of Doddridge's Hymns, 1755, No. 290, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines, and the title changed to :Christ the Head of the Church,” and again in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1839. The 1755 text is that in common use.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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