O for one celestial ray

Author: Augustus Toplady

Toplady, Augustus Montague, the author of "Rock of Ages," was born at Farnham, Surrey, November 4, 1740. His father was an officer in the British army. His mother was a woman of remarkable piety. He prepared for the university at Westminster School, and subsequently was graduated at Trinity College, Dublin. While on a visit in Ireland in his sixteenth year he was awakened and converted at a service held in a barn in Codymain. The text was Ephesians ii. 13: "But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." The preacher was an illiterate but warm-hearted layman named Morris. Concerning this experience Toplady wrote: "Strange that I, who had so long sat under the means of grace in England, should b… Go to person page >

O for one celestial ray. Anne Steele and A. M. Toplady. [Prayer for the Holy Spirit.] This hymn is based on the 12 concluding lines of Miss Steele's poem on "Captivity," published in her Poems, &c, 1760, vol. ii. p. 46 (Sedgwick's reprint, 1863, p. 227), and appeared in A. M. Toplady's Psalms & Hymns, 1776, No. 194, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines. This form of the text is in a few modern collections, including the Baptist Psalms & Hymns, 1858, and others.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)