Scripture References:
st. 1 = Heb. 4:14-16
st. 2 = Isa. 54:7, John 14:18
Like the previous four hymns, "Come, You Disconsolate" is an invitation, a call for sinners to come to Christ with their sorrows and find healing (st. 1), experience hope and comfort (st. 2), and participate in the feast of the Lamb (st. 3). The text empha¬sizes the consolation that Christ offers to those who turn to him in faith.
Entitled "Relief in Prayer," this text by Thomas Moore (b. Dublin, Ireland, 1779; d. Devizes, Wiltshire, England, 1852) was first published in three stanzas in Moore's Sacred Songs, Duets and Trios (1816), one of his thirty-two hymn texts in that collection. Minor changes were made for the 1824 edition.
Although born and educated in Ireland, Moore spent much of his adult life in England. In 1804 he began a civil service appointment in Bermuda but delegated it to a deputy, who embezzled money that Moore had to pay back! He traveled throughout the eastern United States and Canada in 1840 but then returned to London. Moore became known for two achievements–playing and singing Irish folk songs in aristocratic homes and writing poetry. His publications include a biography of Lord Byron and A Selection of Irish Melodies (1807-1834).
The American composer Thomas Hastings (b. Washington, Litchfield County, CT, 1784; d. New York, NY, 1872) revised Moore's stanzas 1 and 2 and substituted his own third stanza when he published the hymn in Spiritual Songs for Social Worship (1831), compiled by Hastings and Lowell Mason (PHH 96). Like Lowell Mason, Hastings was a rire1ess writer, composer, and promoter of church music in the European style (he thought the shape-note tradition "unscientific"). He wrote some six hundred hymn texts and composed about a thousand tunes, most of which have been forgotten. From 1823 to 1832 he lived in Utica, New York, where he directed the Oneida County Choir and was editor of a religious magazine, The Western Recorder. In 1832 Hastings was invited by twelve churches to come to New York City to improve their psalm singing. He stayed there the rest of his life, composing, writing, teaching, and directing. He published some fifty volumes, including his Utica Collection (1816, later expanded as Musica Sacra), Spiritual Songs for Social Worship (with Mason, 1833), and Church Melodies (1858).
Liturgical Use:
As an invitation hymn in evangelistic services, possibly with altar calls or with the Lord's Supper (note st. 3); useful in the service of confession/forgiveness and comfort/encouragement.
--Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1987
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