The Lord Jehovah calls. P. Doddridge. [Warning to Sinners.] This hymn is No. 64, in the D. MSS. It is in 4 stanzas of 4 lines, and headed, "On hearing God's Voice immediately; from Heb. iii. 13." It has no date; but being found between one hymn dated "April 10, 1735," and another "Jan. 1, 1738," we may date it circa 1736 with tolerable certainty. In Job Orton's posthumous edition of Doddridge's Hymns, &c, 1755, it was given in a slightly different form as No. 309, and with the heading changed to "An immediate Attention to God's Voice required," Heb. iii. 15. The same text and heading were repeated in J. D. Humphreys's edition of Doddridge's Hymns, &c, 1839, No. 335.
-- 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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