The Horrors of the Second death

O where shall rest be found

Author: James Montgomery
Published in 642 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, MusicXML
Audio files: MIDI

Representative Text

1 O where shall rest be found
Rest for the weary soul?
'Twere vain the ocean's depths to sound,
Or pierce to either pole.

2 Beyond this vale of tears
There is a life above,
Unmeasured by the flight of years;
And all that life is love.

3 Thro' Christ, the Life, the Way,
May we that life obtain;
And thro' the merits of his blood,
That endless glory gain.

Source: Christ in Song: for all religious services nearly one thousand best gospel hymns, new and old with responsive scripture readings (Rev. and Enl.) #153

Author: James Montgomery

James Montgomery (b. Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, 1771; d. Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, 1854), the son of Moravian parents who died on a West Indies mission field while he was in boarding school, Montgomery inherited a strong religious bent, a passion for missions, and an independent mind. He was editor of the Sheffield Iris (1796-1827), a newspaper that sometimes espoused radical causes. Montgomery was imprisoned briefly when he printed a song that celebrated the fall of the Bastille and again when he described a riot in Sheffield that reflected unfavorably on a military commander. He also protested against slavery, the lot of boy chimney sweeps, and lotteries. Associated with Christians of various persuasions, Montgomery supported missio… Go to person page >

Notes

O where shall rest be found. J. Montgomery. [The Present and the Future.] Written for the Anniversary Sermons of the Bed Hill Wesleyan Sunday School, Sheffield, which were preached on March 15 and 16,
1818, and printed for use on a broadsheet, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines. It was included in Cotterill's Selection, 1819, No. 172, in 3 stanzas of 8 lines, and with stanza v. of the original rewritten thus:—

Broadsheet, 1818.
"Lord God of grace and truth
Teach us that death to shun;
Nor let us from our earliest youth
For ever be undone.”

Cotterill, 1819.
“Lord God of truth and grace!
Teach us that death to shun ;
Lest we be driven from Thy face,
And evermore undone."'

The latter text was repeated in Montgomery's Christian Psalmist, 1825, No. 514, with "Lest we be driven," altered to ”Lest we be banish’d from Thy face," in stanza iii., l. 3. This form of the text was repeated in his Original Hymns, 1853, No. 216, and is that in common use.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Tune

BOYLSTON


SHAWMUT (Mason)


DENNIS (Nägeli)

Lowell Mason (PHH 96) arranged DENNIS and first published it in The Psaltery (1845), a hymnal he compiled with George. Webb (PHH 559). Mason attributed the tune to Johann G. Nageli (b. Wetzikon, near Zurich, Switzerland, 1773; d. Wetzikon, 1836) but included no source reference. Nageli presumably pu…

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Instances

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The Baptist Hymnal #634

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The Cyber Hymnal #5538

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