The Spirit's Influences Compared to Living Water

Top Media Text Author Text Info Notes Tune Timeline Arrangements Page Scans Instances

Blest Jesus, source of grace divine

Author: Philip Doddridge
Tune: VESTAL
Published in 59 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, MusicXML
Audio files: MIDI

Piano/Organ
	An American Sonata for Solo Instrument a…

Representative Text

1 Bless'd Jesus, source of grace divine
What soul-refreshing streams are thine!
O bring these healing waters nigh,
Or we must droop, and fall, and die.

2 No traveller thro' desert lands,
’Midst scorching suns, and burning sands,
More needs the current to obtain,
Or to enjoy refreshing rain.

3 Our longing souls aloud would sing,
Spring up, celestial fountain, spring;
To a redundant river flow,
And cheer this thirsty land below.

4 May this blest torrent near my side,
Thro' all the desert gently glide;
Then in Immanuel’s land above,
Spread to a sea of joy and love!

Source: A Selection of Hymns: from the best authors, intended to be an appendix to Dr. Watt's psalms and hymns. (1st Am. ed.) #CCVIII

All representative texts • Compare texts ^ top

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 >

^ top

First Line:	Blest Jesus, source of grace divine
Title:	The Spirit's Influences Compared to Living Water
Author:	Philip Doddridge
Meter:	8.8.8.8
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

John 4:10
(hymns)

^ top

Notes

Blest Jesus, Source of grace divine. P. Doddridge. [The Water of Life.] This hymn is No. 88 in the Doddridge manuscript, where it is undated. In J. Orton's edition of Doddridge's (posthumous) Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 221, it is given in 4 stanzas of 4 lines, with a text slightly differing from the D.MSS. It is also in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1839. Its most popular form is that given to it early in the century in some American Unitarian collections:— "Blest Spirit, Source of grace divine." In this form it is in the Unitarian Hymn [and Tune] Book, Boston, 18G8, and other hymnals.

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

^ top