Great Father of each perfect gift

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Great Father of each perfect gift

Author: Philip Doddridge
Published in 62 hymnals

Representative Text

1 Great Father of each perfect gift,
Behold thy servants wait;
With longing eyes and lifted hands
We flock around thy gate.

2 Oh, shed abroad that choicest gift,
Thy Spirit from above,
To cheer our eyes with sacred light,
And fire our hearts with love.

3 Blest earnest of eternal joy,
Declare our sins forgiven;
And bear with energy divine,
Our raptured thoughts to heaven.

Source: The Voice of Praise: a collection of hymns for the use of the Methodist Church #272

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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:	Great Father of each perfect gift
Author:	Philip Doddridge
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Great Father of each perfect gift. P. Doddridge. [Whitsuntide.] This hymn is No. 89 of the Doddridge Manuscript, but is undated. It was first published in J. Orton's (posthumous) edition of Doddridge's Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 251, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines, and headed, "The descent of the Spirit, or His influence desired," Acts x. 44. It was also repeated in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1839, No. 276. There are slight differences in the text of each, but that of Orton is commonly received as the original. The hymn is in several important collections in Great Britain and America. In the American Baptist Praise Book, 1871, No. 522, it begins, "Great Father of our feeble race."

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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