Our God is a spirit, and they who aright

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Our God is a spirit, and they who aright

Author: Bernard Barton
Published in 2 hymnals

Representative Text

Our God is a spirit, and they who aright
Would offer the worship He loveth,
In the heart’s holy temple will seek with delight
The spirit the Father approveth.

This, this is the worship the Saviour made known
When she of Samaria found him
By the Patriarch’s well, sitting weary, alone,
With the stillness of noontide around him.

He having once entered hath shown us the way,
O God! how to worship before Thee,
Not with the vain forms of that earlier day,
But in spirit and truth to adore Thee.

Source: A Book of Hymns for Public and Private Devotion (15th ed.) #20

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Author: Bernard Barton

Barton, Bernard, commonly known as the "Quaker Poet," was born in London Jan. 31, 1784, and educated at a Quaker school at Ipswich. In 1798 he was apprenticed to Mr. S. Jesup, a shopkeeper at Halstead, Essex, with whom he remained until 1806, when he removed to Woodbridge, Suffolk, and entered into business with his brother, as a coal and corn merchant. On the death of his wife at the end of the first year of their married life, he proceeded to Liverpool, where he acted as a private tutor for a short time. He returned to Woodbridge in 1810, where he secured an engagement in the local bank of the Messrs. Alexander. This appointment he held for 40 years. He died at Woodbridge, Feb. 19, 1849. During the same year his daughter published his Poe… Go to person page >

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