Now let our mourning hearts revive. P. Doddridge. [Death of a Minister.] Written on the death of a Minister, at Kettering, August 22, 1736, and headed, "Comfort in God under the Removal of Ministers; or, other Useful Persons by Death, Joshua, i. 2, 4, 5" (D. MSS.) It was given in Job Orton's posthumous edition of Doddridge's Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 17, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines, with the heading changed to, "Support in the gracious presence of God under the Loss of Ministers, and other useful Friends"; and repeated in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, in 1839, with the same heading. It is in common use in Great Britain and America. Another form of the text, beginning with stanza ii., "What though the arm of conquering death " is also in several collections.
--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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