God of our lives, Thy constant care

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God of our lives, Thy constant care

Author: Philip Doddridge
Published in 74 hymnals

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Representative Text

1 The God of life, Whose constant care
with blessings crowns each opening year,
My scanty span doth still prolong,
And wakes anew mine annnual song.

2 Thy children, panting to be gone,
May bid the tide of time roll on,
To land them on that happy shore
Where years and death are known no more.

3 No more fatigue, no more distress,
Nor sin, nor hell, shall reach that place;
No groans, to mingle with the songs
Resounding from immortal tongues:

4 No more alarms from ghostly foes;
No cares to break the long repose;
No midnight shade, no clouded sun,
But sacred, high, eternal noon.

5 O long-expected year! begin;
Dawn on this world of woe and sin;
Fain would we leave this weary road,
And sleep in death, to rest with God.

Source: Hymnal: according to the use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America #30

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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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First Line:	God of our lives, Thy constant care
Author:	Philip Doddridge
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

Jeremiah 28:16
(hymns)

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Notes

God of my life, Thy constant care. P. Doddridge. [New Year.] First published in his (posthumous) Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 134, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines, and headed, "The possibility of dying this Year, Jeremiah xxviii. 16; For New Year's Day." In 1839 it was republished, with slight variations in the text, in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the Hymns, &c, No. 152. In Dr. Dale's English Hymn Book, 1874, No. 1174, stanzas i., iv.-vi., and in Common Praise, 1879, No. 325, stanzas i., iii., v., are given in each case as "God of our life, Thy constant care." An arrangement of stanzas ii.-v. also appeared in Cotterill's Selection, 1810, and later editions, as, "How many kindred souls are fled." This is repeated in a few modern collections.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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