How long shall dreams of creature-bliss

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 >

How long shall dreams of creature [earthly] bliss? P. Doddridge. [God the Salvation of His People.] Written Aug. 15, 1736, Doddridge Manuscript, and published in his (posthumous) Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 125, in 4 stanzas of 4 lines; and again in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1839. In one or two American collections it begins, "How long shall dreams of earthly bliss?" as in the Unitarian Hymns for the Church of Christ, Boston, 1853.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)