Jakob Ritter

Ritter, Jakob, son of Samuel Ritter, assessor of the Court of Appeal and Syndic o the Magdeburg administration at Halle, was born at Halle, May 29, 1627. After the completion of his university course at Wittenberg, he was appointed secretary of the Magdeburg administration, and Justiciary at Langendorf, near Weissenfels. He died at Halle, Aug. 14, 1669. (Koch, iii. 352; Blätter für Hymnologie, 1886, p. 2. In the latter his volume of 1666, see below, is spoken of as "not apparently hitherto inspected by any hymnologist." The present writer had however discovered and examined it at Wernigerode some eix months earlier.)

Ritter's hymns appeared in his translation of a work by Dr. Daniel Sennert (b. at Breslau, Nov. 25,1572; d. at Wittenberg, July 25, 1637, as Professor of Medicine). The translation by Ritter is entitled, Nützliche und heilsame Vor-bereit-und Ubung eines christlichen Lebens und seeligen Sterbens, and was published at Leipzig, 1666, with a dedication, dated Halle, 1666. The work contains 18 chapters, to each of which Ritter added a hymn. A number of these hymns are worthy of note, being distinguished by conciseness and by living faith.

Two came into extended use in Germany, and one has been translated into English, viz.:—
Ihr, die ihr euch von Christo nennt. True Christianity. In 1666, as above, p. 150, at the end of chapter 10, which is entitled "On the calling and office of a true Christian." The hymn is in 6 st. of 4 1., and is a masterly and concise delineation of true as opposed to nominal Christianity. Included in the Nürnberg Gesang-Buch, 1676, the Berlin Geistliche Lieder, ed. 1863, No. 610, &c. Translated as: —
0 ye your Saviour's name who bear. A good and full translation by Miss Cox, in her Sacred Hymns from the German 1841, p. 121. Her st. i.-iii., vi., were included in Alford's Psalms & Hymns, 1844, his Year of Praise, 1867, and others. The same cento, altered, and beginning, "O ye who bear your Saviour's name," is in Kennedy, 1863.
Another translaton is: "O ye who bear your Saviour's name." By Lady E. Fortescue, 1843, p. 53. [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.)

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)