Praise for National Peace

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Great Ruler of the earth and skies

Author: Anne Steele
Tune: HUS
Published in 92 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, Noteworthy Composer
Audio files: MIDI

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	Carols from the Heart (Artistic Organ Se…

Representative Text

1 Great Ruler of the earth and skies,
A word of thine almighty breath
Can sink the world, or bid it rise:
Thy smile is life, thy frown is death.

2 When angry nations rush to arms,
And rage, and noise, and tumult reign,
And war resounds its dire alarms,
And slaughter dyes the hostile plain--

3 Thy sov'reign eye looks calmly down,
And marks their course, and bounds their power;
Thy law the angry nations own,
And noise and war are heard no more.

4 Then peace returns with balmy wing;--
Sweet peace, with her what blessings fled!
Glad plenty laughs, the valleys sing,
Reviving commerce lifts her head.

5 To thee we pay our grateful songs;
Thy kind protection still implore:
Oh, may our hearts, and lives, and tongues
Confess thy goodness, and adore.

Source: The Voice of Praise: a collection of hymns for the use of the Methodist Church #760

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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 >

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First Line:	Great Ruler of the earth and skies
Title:	Praise for National Peace
Author:	Anne Steele
Meter:	8.8.8.8
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Great Ruler of the earth and skies. A word of Thy, &c. Anne Steele. [National Thanksgiving for Peace.] First published in her Poems on Subjects chiefly Devotional, 1760, vol. i. p. 38, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines, and entitled, "Praise for National Peace." In 1787 it was given in Rippon's Baptist Selection, No. 531, and subsequently in a large number of hymn-books in Great Britain and America, including the Cooke & Denton Hymnal, 1853; Stowell's Psalms & Hymns, 1831 (15th edition, 1877), &c. Original text in D. Sedgwick's reprint of her Hymns, &c, 1863.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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