When Israel by divine command

Representative Text

1 When Israel, by divine command,
The pathless desert trod,
They found, throughout the barren land,
A sure resource in God.

2 A cloudy pillar marked the road,
And screened them from the heat;
From the hard rock the water flowed,
And manna was their meat.

3 Like them, we have a rest in view,
Secure from hostile powers:
Like them, we pass a desert too,
But Israel's God is ours.

4 His word a light before us spreads,
By which our path we see;
His love, a banner o'er our heads,
From harm preserves us free.

5 Jesus, the Bread of life, is given
To be our daily food;
Within us dwells that well from heaven,
The Spirit of our God.

6 Lord, 'tis enough, we ask no more;
Thy grace around us pours
Its rich and unexhausted store,
And all its joy is ours.

Source: A Few Hymns and Some Spiritual Songs. Selected 1856, for the Little Flock. Revised, 1881 #303

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Author: John Newton

John Newton (b. London, England, 1725; d. London, 1807) was born into a Christian home, but his godly mother died when he was seven, and he joined his father at sea when he was eleven. His licentious and tumultuous sailing life included a flogging for attempted desertion from the Royal Navy and captivity by a slave trader in West Africa. After his escape he himself became the captain of a slave ship. Several factors contributed to Newton's conversion: a near-drowning in 1748, the piety of his friend Mary Catlett, (whom he married in 1750), and his reading of Thomas à Kempis' Imitation of Christ. In 1754 he gave up the slave trade and, in association with William Wilberforce, eventually became an ardent abolitionist. After becoming a tide… Go to person page >

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Text Information

Text Information

First Line:	When Israel by divine command
Author:	John Newton
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Tune

ST. NICHOLAS (Greene)

DUNFERMLINE

DUNFERMLINE is one of the "common" tunes from Andro Hart's psalter The CL Psalms of David, Edinburgh (l615)–a "common" tune was one that was not matched with a specific text in a songbook. Millar Patrick, author of Four Centuries of Scottish Psalmody (London, 1949) and The Story of the Church's So…

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