O Lord our God, with earnest care

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O Lord our God, with earnest care

Translator: J. M. Neale
Tune: DODGE
Published in 8 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, Noteworthy Composer
Audio files: MIDI

Representative Text

1 O Lord our God, with earnest care,
With contrite fast, and tear, and prayer,
And works of mercy and of love,
We pray for pardon from above.

2 Be present now, be present here,
And mark Thy Church’s falling tear;
And own the grief that fills her eyes,
In mourning her iniquities.

3 Oh, by Thy grace be pardon won,
For sins that former years have done;
And let Thy mercy guard us still,
From crimes that threaten future ill.

4 So mortify our every sense,
Through grace of outward abstinence,
That from each stain and spot of sin,
Our souls may keep their fast within.

5 O Father, that we ask be done,
Through Jesus Christ, Thine only Son;
Who, with the Holy Ghost and Thee,
Shall live and reign eternally!

Source: The Cyber Hymnal #12017

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Translator: J. M. Neale

John M. Neale's life is a study in contrasts: born into an evangelical home, he had sympathies toward Rome; in perpetual ill health, he was incredibly productive; of scholarly temperament, he devoted much time to improving social conditions in his area; often ignored or despised by his contemporaries, he is lauded today for his contributions to the church and hymnody. Neale's gifts came to expression early–he won the Seatonian prize for religious poetry eleven times while a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, England. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1842, but ill health and his strong support of the Oxford Movement kept him from ordinary parish ministry. So Neale spent the years between 1846 and 1866 as a warden of Sackvi… Go to person page >

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Text Information

Text Information

First Line:	O Lord our God, with earnest care
Translator:	J. M. Neale
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

O Lord our God, with earnest care. [Fast Day.] This cento, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines in A Selection of Hymns Designed as a Supplement to the Psalms & Hymns of the Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, 1861, No. 356, and the Songs for the Sanctuary, N. Y., 1865, No. 1333, is from translations of Latin hymns published in the Hymnal Noted; stanza i. being stanza iii. of "Ecce tempus idoneum;" stanzas ii., iii. being stanzas iii., iv. of "Jesu quadra-genariae;" stanza iv. being stanza iv. of "Audi benigne Conditor;" and stanza v. of "Plasmator hominis Deus." Of these translations stanzas i.-iv. are by Dr. Neale, and stanza v. by another hand. The result is a most successful hymn for a Fast Day service, or for Lent.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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