Hail, O Source of Every Blessing

Author: Basil Woodd

Woodd, Basil , M.A., was born at Richmond in Surrey, Aug. 5, 1760. The influences of his home and of his widowed mother were most salutary, and produced the best results. As a boy he studied under the Rev. T. Clarke, of Chesham Bois, and at seventeen he entered Trinity College, Oxford. Taking Holy Orders in 1783, he was chosen lecturer of St. Peter's Cornhill, in 1784; morning preacher at Bentinck Chapel, Marylebone in 1785, and Rector of Drayton Beauchamp, Buckinghamshire, in 1808. Bentinck Chapel being a proprietary chapel, he purchased the lease in 1793, and held the Incumbency, together with the Rectory of Drayton, from 1808 to his death on April 12, 1831. He took a deep interest in the great religious societies, and in the anti-slave… Go to person page >

Hail, Thou source of every blessing. B. Woodd. [Epiphany.] Appeared in his Psalms of David and other portions of the Sacred Scriptures, &c.,n.d. [cir. 1810-21], No. 177, in 3 stanzas of 8 lines, and again in his New Metrical Version of the Psalms of David, &c, 1821, No. 177. In Bickersteth's Christian Psalmody, 1833, it was given as by Robinson (i.e. R. Robinson, q. v.), and this error has been repeated in several collections. It is in extensive use, many collections following Bickerstein’s text of 1833. Original text in the Hymnal Companion, No. 95, with stanza iii., line 7, “all-inviting Saviour," for "universal Saviour;" line 3, "temples" for "temple."

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)