Thy Kingdom Come

Representative Text

1 Come, kingdom of our God,
Sweet reign of light and love!
Shed peace and hope and joy abroad,
And wisdom from above.

2 O'er all our spirits first
Extend thy healing reign;
There raise and quench the sacred thirst,
That never pains again.

3 Come, kingdom of our God,
And make the broad earth thine!
Stretch o’er her lands and isles the rod
That flowers with grace divine.

4 Soon may all tribes be blest
With fruit from life’s glad tree;
And in its shade like brothers rest,
Sons of one family.

Amen.

Source: The Hymnal of The Evangelical United Brethren Church #356

Author: John Johns

Johns, John, born at Plymouth, March 17, 1801, the son of an artist. Educated at the grammar school and by the Rev. I. Worsley, Unitarian minister at Plymouth, and afterwards spent two years at Edinburgh. In 1820 became minister of the old Presbyterian chapel at Crediton, where he remained till his removal to Liverpool in 1836, as Minister to the Poor. He was a man of fine poetic temperament and retiring disposition, but his work among the people called out his great practical and organising ability. He died a sacrifice to the fever which raged in the district where he laboured, June 23, 1847. Besides his reports to the Liverpool Domestic Mission Society, and frequent contributions to the Monthly Repository, Christian Reformer, and Christia… Go to person page >

Text Information

First Line: Come, kingdom of our God, Sweet reign of light and love
Title: Thy Kingdom Come
Author: John Johns (1837)
Language: English
Copyright: Public Domain

Notes

Come, kingdom of our God. J. Johns. [Prayer for the increase of Spiritual Life.] Contributed to Beard's Manchester Unitarian Collection, 1837, No. 203, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines, and headed, "Prayer for the kingdom of God." In 1840 it was repeated in Dr. Martineau's Hymns, &c, and subsequently in numerous Unitarian and other collections in Great Britain and America. It is sometimes used on behalf of Missions. The fifth stanza, which is the finest in the hymn, is usually omitted in the American collections. Original text in Dr. Martineau's Hymns, &c, 1873, and the American Hymns and Songs of Praise, N. Y., 1874, with, in the latter, stanza v., line 2, "raise the," for "raise Thy glorious throne."

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Tune

ST. THOMAS (Williams)

ST. THOMAS is actually lines 5 through 8 of the sixteen-line tune HOLBORN, composed by Aaron Williams (b. London, England, 1731; d. London, 1776) and published in his Collection (1763, 1765) as a setting for Charles Wesley's text "Soldiers of Christ, Arise" (570). The harmonization is by Lowell Maso…

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The Cyber Hymnal #883

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