The Sabbath Day Consecrated

Representative Text

1 Great God, this sacred day of Thine
Demands the soul's collected powers;
Gladly we now to thee resign
These solemn, consecrated hours:
O may our souls adoring own
The grace that calls us to Thy throne.

2 All-seeing God! thy piercing eye
can every secret thought explore;
May worldly cares our bosoms fly,
And where Thou art intrude no more:
O may thy grace our spirits move,
And fix our minds on things above!

3 Thy Spirit's powerful aid impart,
And bid Thy word, with life divine,
Engage the ear and warm the heart:
Then shall the day indeed be Thine:
Then shall our souls adoring own
The grace that calls us to Thy throne.

Source: Hymnal: according to the use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America #151

All representative texts • Compare texts ^ top

Author: Anne Steele

Anne Steele was the daughter of Particular Baptist preacher and timber merchant William Steele. She spent her entire life in Broughton, Hampshire, near the southern coast of England, and devoted much of her time to writing. Some accounts of her life portray her as a lonely, melancholy invalid, but a revival of research in the last decade indicates that she had been more active and social than what was previously thought. She was theologically conversant with Dissenting ministers and "found herself at the centre of a literary circle that included family members from various generations, as well as local literati." She chose a life of singleness to focus on her craft. Before Christmas in 1742, she declined a marriage proposal from contemporar… Go to person page >

^ top

First Line:	Great God, this sacred day of Thine
Title:	The Sabbath Day Consecrated
Author:	Anne Steele
Meter:	8.8.8.8.8.8
Source:	Wesley's Col.
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

^ top

Notes

Great God, this [hallow'd] sacred day of Thine. Anne Steele. [Sunday.] It was included In her Miscellaneous Poems, which were added to her Poems on Subjects chiefly Devotional (1st edition, 1760), as a third volume in 1780, p. 138, in 4 stanzas of 6 lines. First published in 1769 in the Bristol Baptist Collection of Ash and Evans, No. 308, and from that date it came into general and somewhat extensive use. In some collections it begins, "Great God, this hallow’d day of Thine." Its use in this form is limited. Original text in D. Sedgwick's reprint of Miss Steele's Hymns, 1863, p. 151.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

^ top