Command Thy Blessing from Above

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Command Thy blessing from above

Author: James Montgomery
Published in 66 hymnals

Piano/Organ
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Representative Text

Command thy blessing from above,
O God! on all assembled here;
Behold us with a father's love,
While we look up with filial fear.

Command Thy blessing, Jesus! Lord!
May we Thy true disciples be;
Speak to each heart the mighty Word,
Say to the weakest, "Follow me."

Command Thy blessing in this hour,
Spirit of Truth! and fill this place
With humbling and with healing power,
With killing and with quickening grace.

103
O Thou, our Maker, Saviour, Guide,
One true eternal God confest!
Whom, thou hast join'd let none divide,
None dare to curse whom thou hast blest.

With thee and these for ever found,
May all the souls who here unite,
With harps and songs thy throne surround,
Rest in thy love and reign in light.

Sacred Poems and Hymns

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Author: James Montgomery

James Montgomery (b. Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, 1771; d. Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, 1854), the son of Moravian parents who died on a West Indies mission field while he was in boarding school, Montgomery inherited a strong religious bent, a passion for missions, and an independent mind. He was editor of the Sheffield Iris (1796-1827), a newspaper that sometimes espoused radical causes. Montgomery was imprisoned briefly when he printed a song that celebrated the fall of the Bastille and again when he described a riot in Sheffield that reflected unfavorably on a military commander. He also protested against slavery, the lot of boy chimney sweeps, and lotteries. Associated with Christians of various persuasions, Montgomery supported missio… Go to person page >

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First Line:	Command Thy blessing from above
Title:	Command Thy Blessing from Above
Author:	James Montgomery
Meter:	8.8.8.8
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Command Thy blessing from above. J. Montgomery. [Divine Worship.] Written for the Sheffield Sunday School Union, Whitsuntide gathering, June 3, 1816, and printed for that occasion, and in the Evangelical Magazine, Sept., 1816, p. 372. In 1819 it was included in Cotterill's Selection, No. 13, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines, and there entitled "For God's blessing on His assembled people." In 1825 it was republished, with alterations, by Montgomery, in his Christian Psalmist, No. 470, and again with the same text in his Original Hymns, 1853, No. 99. The arrangement, however, in common use are various, some following Cotterill’s text, as in Hymnal Companion from Bickersteth's Christian Psalmody, 1833, others the revised text of 1825 and 1853, and others, as in New Congregational Hymn Book, a mixture of the two. The American use also varies in like manner.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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Tune

GERMANY (Gardiner)

MELCOMBE (Webbe)

Also known as: ST. PHILIPS BENEDICTION GRANTON NAZARETH MELCOMBE was first used as an anonymous chant tune (with figured bass) in the Roman Catholic Mass and was published in 1782 in An Essay on the Church Plain Chant. It was first ascribed to Samuel Webbe (the elder; b. London, England, 1740; d.…

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