Perpetual source of light and grace

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Perpetual source of light and grace

Author: Philip Doddridge
Published in 52 hymnals

Representative Text

1 Perpetual source of light and grace!
We hail thy sacred name.
Through ev'ry year's revolving round,
Thy goodness is the same.

2 Inconstant service we repay,
And treach'rous vows renew,
False as the morning's scatt'ring cloud,
And transient as the dew.

3 Low at thy feet our guilt we mourn,
And loud implore thy grace
To bear our feeble footsteps on
In all thy righteous ways.

4 Arm'd with this energy divine,
Our souls shall constant prove,
And with increasing transport press
On to thy courts above.

5 So, by thy pow'r, the morning sun
Pursues his radiant way,
Brightens each moment in his race,
And shines to perfect day.

Source: A Collection of Hymns and A Liturgy: for the use of Evangelical Lutheran Churches; to which are added prayers for families and individuals #244

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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:	Perpetual source of light and grace
Author:	Philip Doddridge
Copyright:	Public Domain

Hosea 6:4
(hymns)

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Notes

Perpetual Source of Light and Grace. P. Doddridge. [Inconstancy in Religion lamented.] This hymn is No. 74 in the D. MSS., and undated, but is found between other hymns dated respectively, "Jan. 15, 1737/8," and "Jan. 1, 1738," thus fixing the date as 1738. It was given, without alteration, in Job Orton's posthumous edition of Doddridge's Hymns, &c , 1755, as No. 151, in 6 stanzas of 4 1ines, with the heading "Inconstancy in Religion. Hosea vi. 4," and again, with slight changes, in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1839, No. 170. It is in a few modern collections, including Martineau's Hymns, &c, 1840 and 1873. In a few collections it begins "Eternal Source of Light and Grace."

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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