How Shall I Follow Him I Serve?

Top Media Text Author Text Info Notes Tune Timeline Arrangements Page Scans Instances

How Shall I Follow Him I Serve?

Author: Josiah Conder
Published in 80 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, MusicXML
Audio files: MIDI

Piano/Organ
	The Church Pianist's Library, Vol. 11

Representative Text

1 How shall I follow Him I serve?
How shall I copy Him I love?
Nor from those blessed footsteps swerve,
Which lead me to His seat above?

2 Privations, sorrows, bitter scorn,
The life of toil, the mean abode,
The faithless kiss, the crown of thorn,--
Are these the consecrated road?

3 'Twas thus He suffered, though a Son,
Foreknowing, choosing, feeling all,
Until the perfect work was done,
And drunk the bitter cup of gall.

4 Lord, should my path through suffering lie,
Forbid it I should e'er repine;
Still let me turn to Calvary,
Nor heed my griefs, remembering Thine.

5 O let me think how Thou didst leave
Untasted every pure delight,
To fast, to faint, to watch, to grieve,
The toilsome day, the homeless night:--

6 To faint, to grieve, to die for me!
Thou camest, not Thyself to please;
And, dear as earthly comforts be,
Shall I not love Thee more than these?

7 Yes, I would count them all but loss,
To gain the notice of Thine eye:
Flesh shrinks and trembles at the cross,
But Thou canst give the victory.

The Hymnal: Published by the authority of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., 1895

All representative texts • Compare texts ^ top

Author: Josiah Conder

Josiah Conder was born in London, in 1789. He became a publisher, and in 1814 became proprietor of "The Eclectic Review." Subsequently to 1824, he composed a series of descriptive works, called the "Modern Traveller," which appeared in thirty volumes. He also published several volumes of poems and hymns. He was the author of the first "Congregational Hymn Book" (1836). He died in 1855. --Annotations of the Hymnal, Charles Hutchins, M.A. 1872.… Go to person page >

^ top

First Line:	How Shall I Follow Him I Serve?
Author:	Josiah Conder
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

^ top

Notes

How shall I follow Him I serve. J. Conder. [Resignation and Suffering.] This hymn, in 11 stanzas of 4 lines, on the words, "If any man serve Me, let him follow Me," is in his Star in the East, &c, 1824, p. 62. In 1836 it was rewritten and divided into two hymns, the first in 7 stanzas beginning with the same first line, and included as No. 341 in the Congregational Hymn Book, 1836; and the second in 3 stanza, as "Thou Who for Peter's faith didst pray!" No. 588 in the same collection. The modern arrangements of these hymns, as in the Baptist Psalms & Hymns, 1858; the New Congregational Hymn Book, 1859; Kennedy, 1863, and others are from this 1836 text. In Conder's Hymns of Praise, Prayer, &c, 1856, p. 80, the two hymns are given as one, as in the Star in the East, &c.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

^ top

Tune

GERMANY (Gardiner)

QUEBEC (Baker)

Henry Baker (b. Nuneham, Oxfordshire, England, 1835; d. Wimbledon, England, 1910; not to be confused with Henry W. Baker) was educated as a civil engineer at Winchester and Cooper's Hill and was active in railroad building in India. In 1867 he completed a music degree at Exeter College, Oxford, Engl…

Go to tune page >

All tunes published with 'How Shall I Follow Him I Serve?'^ top