Christians Drawn with Cords of Love

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My God, what silken cords are thine

Author: Philip Doddridge
Tune: ORWELL (Doty)
Published in 49 hymnals

Representative Text

1 My God, what silken cords are thine!
How soft, and yet how strong!
While power, and truth, and love combine
To draw our souls along.

2 Thou saw'st us crush'd beneath the yoke
Of satan and of sin:
Thy hand the iron bondage broke,
Our worthless hearts to win.

3 The guilt of twice ten thousand sins
One moment takes away;
And grace, when first the war begins,
Secures the crowning day.

4 Comfort thro' all this vale of tears
In rich profusion flows,
And glory of unnumber'd years
Eternity bestows.

5 Drawn by such cords we onward move,
"Till round thy throne we meet;
And captives in the chains of love,
Embrace our Conqueror's feet.

Source: Christian's Duty, exhibited in a series of hymns: collected from various authors, designed for the worship of God, and for the edification of Christians, recommended to the serious..(4th ed. improved) #S86

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Author: Philip Doddridge

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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First Line:	My God, what silken cords are thine
Title:	Christians Drawn with Cords of Love
Author:	Philip Doddridge
Meter:	8.6.8.6
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

My God, what silken cords are Thine. P. Doddridge. [Gratitude.] First published in Job Orton's posthumous edition of Doddridge's Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 152, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines, and entitled "Gratitude the Spring of true Religion;" and again in J. D. Humphreys ed. of the same, 1839, No. 171. It is in common use in its original form, and as "My God, what cords of love are Thine," in the London Hymn Book (enlarged) 1873, and others.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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