Come, Thou Desire of All the Saints

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Come, Thou desire of all Thy saints

Author: Anne Steele
Published in 194 hymnals

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	The Fruit of the Spirit

Representative Text

1 Come, Thou Desire of all Thy saints,
Our humble strains attend,
While with our praises and complaints,
Low at Thy feet we bend.

2 How should our songs, like those above,
With warm devotion rise?
How should our souls, on wings of love,
Mount upward to the skies?

3 Come Lord, Thy love alone can raise
In us the heavenly flame;
Then shall our lips resound Thy praise,
Our hearts adore Thy name!

4 Now, Savior, let Thy glory shine,
And fill Thy dwellings here
Till life, and love, and joy divine,
A heaven on earth appear.

5 When shall our hearts, enraptured, say
"Come, great Redeemer, come,
And bring the bright, the glorious day
That calls Thy children home?"

Amen.

Source: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal #104

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Author: Anne Steele

Anne Steele was the daughter of Particular Baptist preacher and timber merchant William Steele. She spent her entire life in Broughton, Hampshire, near the southern coast of England, and devoted much of her time to writing. Some accounts of her life portray her as a lonely, melancholy invalid, but a revival of research in the last decade indicates that she had been more active and social than what was previously thought. She was theologically conversant with Dissenting ministers and "found herself at the centre of a literary circle that included family members from various generations, as well as local literati." She chose a life of singleness to focus on her craft. Before Christmas in 1742, she declined a marriage proposal from contemporar… Go to person page >

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First Line:	Come, Thou desire of all Thy saints
Title:	Come, Thou Desire of All the Saints
Author:	Anne Steele
Meter:	8.6.8.6
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Come, Thou desire of all Thy saints. Anne Steele. [Public Worship.] This hymn appeared with the heading, "Intreating the Presence of Christ in His Churches," in the author's Poems on Subjects chiefly Devotional, 1760, vol. i. p. 76 (2nd ed., 1780, vol. i. p. 76). In 1769 it was reprinted in the Bristol Collection of Ash & Evans, and was thus brought into common use. Its American use is much greater than that in Great Britain. It is usually abbreviated, and is sometimes given, as in the Church Pastorals, Boston, U. S., 1864, as "Come, O Thou King of all Thy saints." This cento is made of stanzas i., vi., vii. Original text in Sedgwick's reprint of Miss Steele's Hymns, 1863.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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