Mighty God, While Angels Bless Thee

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Mighty God, while angels bless Thee

Author: Robert Robinson (1774)
Published in 287 hymnals

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Audio files: MIDI

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Representative Text

1. Mighty God, while angels bless you,
May an infant lisp your name?
Lord of mortals and of angels,
You are ev’ry creature’s theme.

2. Lord of ev’ry land and nation,
Ancient of eternal days,
Sounded through the wide creation
By your just and lawful praise:

3. For the grandeur of your nature,
Grand beyond a seraph’s thought,
For created works of power,
Works with skill and kindness wrought.

4. For your providence, which governs
Through your empire’s wide domain,
Wings an angel, guides a sparrow:
Blessèd be your gentle reign.

5. Brightness of the Father’s glory,
Shall your praise unuttered lie?
Fly my tongue to such a silence!
Sing the Lord who came to die.

6. Did archangels sing your coming?
Did the shepherds learn their lays?
Shame would cover me ungrateful
Should my tongue refuse to praise.

Source: Hymns and Devotions for Daily Worship #34b

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Author: Robert Robinson

Robert Robinson was born at Swaffham, Norfolk, in 1735. In 1749, he was apprenticed to a hairdresser, in Crutched Friars, London. Hearing a discourse preached by Whitefield on "The Wrath to Come," in 1752, he was deeply impressed, and after a period of much disquietude, he gave himself to a religious life. His own peculiar account of this change of life is as follows:--"Robertus Michaelis Marineque Robinson filius. Natus Swaffhami, comitatu Norfolciae, Saturni die Sept. 27, 1735. Renatus Sabbati die, Maii 24, 1752, per predicationem potentem Georgii Whitefield. Et gustatis doloribus renovationis duos annos mensesque septem, absolutionem plenam gratuitamque, per sanguinem pretiosum i secula seculorum. Amen." He soon after began to pr… Go to person page >

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First Line:	Mighty God, while angels bless Thee
Title:	Mighty God, While Angels Bless Thee
Author:	Robert Robinson (1774)
Meter:	8.7.8.7 with alleluias
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Mighty God, while angels bless Thee . R. Robinson. [Glory of God. Christmas.] Miller, in his Singers and Songs of the Church, 1869, p. 267, says that Robinson in his manuscript Catalogue thus refers to this hymn as "A Christmas Hymn, set to music by Dr. Randall, and, with the notes, engraven on a copperplate half-sheet." The date added by Miller is 1774. The hymn is in J. Middleton's Hymns, 1793, No. 137, in 9 stanzas of 4 lines, with the refrain "Hallelujah, H. H. Amen," and the signature "Robinson." This text differs slightly from that given by Burrage in his Baptist Hymn Writers, &c, 1888, pp. 73, 74, which he regards as the original. (See also the Universalist Hymn Book, Boston, U. S. A., 1792.) Dr. Belcher (p. 133, i.) says the hymn was written by Robinson for Benjamin Williams, sometime deacon of the Baptist Church, Reading, England, when the latter was a boy, and asserts that he had the information from Williams himself. The hymn is widely used, as is also the cento therefrom from "Lord of every land and nation." (See Sturgeon's Our Own Hymn Book, 1866, for full text.)

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)

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Tune

AUTUMN (Barthélemon)

This tune is adapted from Barthélemon's piece Durandarte and Belerma: A Pathetic Scotch Ballad (1797). Some editors describe AUTUMN as "adapted from Psalm xlii in the Genevan Psalter, 1551", referring to the similarity between this tune and FREU DICH SEHR.

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