Great God! Did Pious Abram Pray?

Representative Text

1 Great God! did pious Abram pray
For Sodom’s vile abandoned race?
And shall not now Thy Church arouse
Our nation to implore Thy grace?

2 Base as we are, does not Thine eye
Its chosen thousands here survey?
Whose souls, deep humbled, mourn the crowds,
Who walk in sin’s destructive way?

3 O Judge supreme, let not Thy sword
The righteous with the wicked smite;
Nor bury in promiscuous heaps
Rebels and saints, Thy chief delight.

4 For these Thy children, spare the land;
Avert the thunders big with death;
Nor let the seeds of latent fire
Be kindled by Thy flaming breath.

5 O! be not angry, mighty God,
While dust and ashes seek Thy face;
But gently bending from Thy throne,
Renew, and still increase Thy grace.

6 Jesus the Intercessor hear,
And for His sake Thy grace impart
Which, while it stops the fiery stream,
Dissolves the most obdurate heart.

7 Sodom shall change to Zion then,
And heavenly dews be scattered round,
That plants of paradise may spring,
Where baleful poisons cursed the ground.

Source: The Cyber Hymnal #8191

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 >

Text Information

First Line: Great God! did pious Abram pray
Title: Great God! Did Pious Abram Pray?
Author: Philip Doddridge
Source: Published posthumously in Hymns Founded on Various Texts in the Holy Scriptures, by Job Orton (J. Eddowes and J. Cotton, 1755)
Language: English
Copyright: Public Domain

Tune

PENTECOST (Boyd)

William Boyd (b. Montego Bay, Jamaica, 1847; d. Paddington, England, 1928) composed PENTECOST in 1864 for the hymn text "Come, Holy Ghost, Our Souls Inspire"; it was published in 1868 in Thirty-Two Hymn Tunes Composed by Members of the University of Oxford. The name PENTECOST derives from the subjec…

Go to tune page >


Media

The Cyber Hymnal #8191
  • PDF (PDF)
  • Noteworthy Composer Score (NWC, NWC)

Instances

Instances (1 - 1 of 1)
TextScoreAudio

The Cyber Hymnal #8191

Suggestions or corrections? Contact us