Great God! in vain man's narrow view

Representative Text

1 Great God, in vain man's narrow view,
Attempts to look thy nature through.
Our lab'ring pow'rs with rev'rence own,
Thy glories never can be known.

2 Not the high seraph's mighty thought,
Who countless years his God has sought,
Such wondrous height or depth can find,
Or fully trace thy boundless mind.

3 Yet, Lord, thy kindness deigns to show
Enough for mortal men to know;
While wisdom, goodness, pow'r divine,
Thro' all thy works and conduct shine.

4 O! may our souls with rapture trace
Thy works of nature and of grace,
Explore thy sacred truth, and still
Press on to know and do thy will!

Source: A Collection of Hymns and Prayers, for Public and Private Worship #4

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Author: Andrew Kippis

Kippis, Andrew, D.D., was born at Nottingham, March 28,1725, and educated for the ministry under Dr. Doddridge at Northampton, 1741-46. After a short residence with congregations at Boston and Dorking, he settled in London in 1753, as minister of the Princes Street Chapel, Westminster. There lie remained till his death in 1795, holding rank as the leading Presbyterian minister in the metropolis. For many years he was classical tutor at the Hoxton Academy, and afterwards at the Hackney College. He contributed largely to the Gentleman's Magazine and the Monthly Review, and edited five volumes of a new edition of the Biographia Britannica, a work commenced in 1778, and interrupted by his death on Oct. 8, 1795. His Life of Captain Cook was also… Go to person page >

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Text Information

First Line: Great God! in vain man's narrow view
Author: Andrew Kippis
Language: English
Copyright: Public Domain
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Tune

DUKE STREET

First published anonymously in Henry Boyd's Select Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes (1793), DUKE STREET was credited to John Hatton (b. Warrington, England, c. 1710; d, St. Helen's, Lancaster, England, 1793) in William Dixon's Euphonia (1805). Virtually nothing is known about Hatton, its composer,…

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OLD HUNDREDTH

This tune is likely the work of the composer named here, but has also been attributed to others as shown in the instances list below. According to the Handbook to the Baptist Hymnal (1992), Old 100th first appeared in the Genevan Psalter, and "the first half of the tune contains phrases which may ha…

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TRURO (Williams)

TRURO is an anonymous tune, first published in Thomas Williams's Psalmodia Evangelica, (second vol., 1789) as a setting for Isaac Watts' "Now to the Lord a noble song." Virtually nothing is known about this eighteenth-century British editor of the two-volume Psalmodia Evangelica, a collection of thr…

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Timeline

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Media

The Cyber Hymnal #10179
  • PDF (PDF)
  • Noteworthy Composer Score (NWC)
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Instances

Instances (1 - 1 of 1)
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The Cyber Hymnal #10179

The Cyber Hymnal #10179
Include 86 pre-1979 instances
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