Blest day of God, most calm, most bright. J. Mason. [Sunday.] First published in his Songs of Praise, 1683, as the second of two hymns entitled "A Song of Praise for the Lord's Day," in 6 stanzas of 8 lines and 1 stanza of 4 lines. Early in the present century centos from this "Song” of various lengths began to be introduced into the hymn-books of the Church of England, and later, into Nonconformists’ hymnals also; but in scarcely a single instance do we find the same arrangement in any three collections. In modern hymnbooks both in Great Britain and America, the same diversity prevails, no editor having yet succeeded in compiling a cento which others could approve and adopt. No collection can be trusted either for text or original sequence of lines. The full Original text, however, is easily attainable in Sedgwick's reprint of the Songs of Praise, 1859. The opening line sometimes reads:—"Blest day of God, how calm, how bright," as in Mrs. Brock's Children's Hymn Book,1881, No. 40, but the use of this form of the text is limited. Taking the centos together, their use is extensive.
-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
Mason, John. The known facts of his life are scanty. He was the son of a Dissenting Minister, and the grandfather of John Mason, the author of A Treatise on Self-Knowledge. He was educated at Strixton School, Northants, and Clare Hall, Cambridge. After taking his M.A., he became Curate of Isham; and in 1668, Vicar of Stantonbury, Bucks. A little more than five years afterwards he was appointed Rector of Water-Stratford. Here he composed the volume containing The Songs of Praise, his paraphrase of The Song of Solomon, and the Poem on Dives and Lazarus, with which Shepherd's Penitential Cries was afterwards bound up. This volume passed through twenty editions. Besides the Songs of Praise, it contains six Penitential Cries by Mason, and it i… Go to person page >
My Starred Hymns
My FlexScores
My Hymnals
My Purchased Files
