The Sabbath Day Consecrated

Author: Anne Steele

Anne Steele was the daughter of Particular Baptist preacher and timber merchant William Steele. She spent her entire life in Broughton, Hampshire, near the southern coast of England, and devoted much of her time to writing. Some accounts of her life portray her as a lonely, melancholy invalid, but a revival of research in the last decade indicates that she had been more active and social than what was previously thought. She was theologically conversant with Dissenting ministers and "found herself at the centre of a literary circle that included family members from various generations, as well as local literati." She chose a life of singleness to focus on her craft. Before Christmas in 1742, she declined a marriage proposal from contemporar… Go to person page >

Great God, this [hallow'd] sacred day of Thine. Anne Steele. [Sunday.] It was included In her Miscellaneous Poems, which were added to her Poems on Subjects chiefly Devotional (1st edition, 1760), as a third volume in 1780, p. 138, in 4 stanzas of 6 lines. First published in 1769 in the Bristol Baptist Collection of Ash and Evans, No. 308, and from that date it came into general and somewhat extensive use. In some collections it begins, "Great God, this hallow’d day of Thine." Its use in this form is limited. Original text in D. Sedgwick's reprint of Miss Steele's Hymns, 1863, p. 151.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)