O Thou, before Whose gracious throne. [During the dangerous illness of a Minister.] The earliest date to which we have traced this hymn is the 4th edition of the Bristol Baptist Collection of Ash & Evans, 1781, where it is given in 9 stanzas of 4 lines, and is unsigned. In the 8th edition, 1801, it is signed "J— K— .” It was included in full in Rippon's Baptist Selection 1787, No. 413, but without signature. In Dobell's Selection, 1806, No. 592, it is signed "K. —Evans’s Collection" In later editions it is "K." only. This uncertainty of authorship was increased by D. Sedgwick's guesses at the meaning of “K." In one of his books annotated in manuscript we find him giving it to "John Kentish," in another to "George Keith" and so on, but in each case confessing that it was a guess only. In the Primitive Methodist Hymnal 1887, it is given to "F. Kirkham," a signature which is evidently wrong. We must subscribe it "J. K. in Ash & Evans, 1781." In modern collections the text is usually in an abbreviated form.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
Kent, John, was born at Bideford, Devonshire, Dec. 1766, and died Nov. 15, 1843. As a working shipwright his opportunities for acquiring the education and polish necessary for the production of refined verse were naturally limited. His hymns are strongly worded, very earnest and simple, and intensely Calvinistic. A few were published in Samuel Reece's Collection, 1799. The first edition of his Collection of Original Gospel Hymns, was published in 1803, and the 10th edition, with "The Author's Experience," in verse, 264 hymns, 15 longer pieces, and a Life by his Son in 1861. The Calvinistic teaching so prominent in his hymns has restricted their use to a limited number of collections. The greatest use made of them in modern hymnbooks has bee… Go to person page >
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