Awake, awake, my sluggish soul

Author: Ottiwell Heginbotham

Heginbothom, Ottiwell, born in 1744, and died in 1768, was for a short time the Minister of a Nonconformist congregation at Sudbury, Suffolk. The political and religious disputes which agitated the congregation, in the origin of which he had no part, and which resulted in a secession and the erection of another chapel, so preyed upon his mind, and affected his health, that his pastorate terminated with his death within three years of his appointment. His earliest hymn, "When sickness shakes the languid corse [frame]," was printed in the Christian Magazine, Feb. 1763. In 1791 the Rev. John Mead Ray communicated several of Heginbothom's hymns to the Protestant Magazine; and in the same year, these and others to the number of 25, were publishe… Go to person page >

Awake, awake, my sluggish soul. O. Heginbothom. [Watchfulness.] First published in his Hymns, &c, 1794, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines, and based upon St. Luke xii. 38-39. In 1812 it was transferred to Collyer's Collection, No. 653, unaltered, and thus came in to common use. In some American collections, stanzas v. and vi. are omitted. In America it is also given as "Awake, awake, each drowsy soul," as in the Baptist Praise Book, 1871, No. 558. In the Baptist Church Praise Book, N. Y., 1872, we have stanza i., iii., and iv., and in Church Pastorals, Boston, 1864, stanzas i., iii., v. and vi.

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)