The Wisdom of Redeeming Time

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God of eternity, from thee

Author: Philip Doddridge
Tune: WELLS (Holdroyd)
Published in 121 hymnals

Representative Text

1 God of eternity! from thee
Did infant time its being draw;
Moments and days, and months and years,
Revolve by thine unvaried law.

2 Silent and swift they glide away;
Steady and strong the current flows,
Lost in eternity's wide sea,
The boundless gulf from whence it rose.

3 With it the thoughtless sons of men
Before the rapid stream are borne
On to their everlasting home,
Whence not one soul can e'er return.

4 Great Source of wisdom! teach our hearts
To know the price of every hour,
That time may bear us on to joys
Beyond its measure and its power.

Source: The Voice of Praise: a collection of hymns for the use of the Methodist Church #912

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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 >

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