My Helper, God, I bless His name. P. Doddridge. [New Year.] This hymn is almost entirely unknown under its original first line, but altered as "Our Helper, God, we bless His [Thy] name," it is found in several collections, including Horder's Congregational Hymns, 1884. It was first published in Job Orton's posthumous edition of Doddridge's Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 19, in 4 stanzas of 4 lines, and headed, "Ebenezer, or God's helping hand review'd and acknowledged. 1 Sam. vii. 12. For New Year's day." It is also in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1839, No. 23.
--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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