Great Source of life, our souls confess. P. Doddridge. [Thanksgiving for Personal Benefits.] This hymn is No. 10 in the "D. MSS." but is undated. It is in 5 stanzas of 4 lines, and entitled, "Of walking before the Lord in the land of the living," Psalm cxvi. 9. The same text was given in his (posthumous) Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 59, but the title was changed to, "Deliverance celebrated and good resolutions formed"; and again in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the Hymns, &c, 1839, No. 72. In some modern collections stanza ii. is omitted, as in Mercer's Church Psalter & Hymn Book, edition 1864, No. 507. Usually, however, it is given in full.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
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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