In the beginning, God said Be

In the beginning, God said Be

Author: James Montgomery
Published in 1 hymnal

Full Text

In the beginning, God said "Be!"
And all things were,--heaven, earth, and sea:
God, in the end, once more will say,
"Perish!" and all shall pass away.

But Thou, O Lord! for ever art:
The orb of Thine eternity
Is one great whole, without a part;
Past, present, future, meet in Thee.

Convinced of sin, my soul would bend
Before Thee in the lowest dust;
Yet to Thy Throne by prayer ascend,
With trembling awe and childlike trust.

O look in loving-kindness down
On a frail worm with Thee at strife;
Eternal death were in Thy frown,
Thy smile will be eternal life!

Sacred Poems and Hymns

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Author: James Montgomery

Montgomery, James, son of John Montgomery, a Moravian minister, was born at Irvine, Ayrshire, Nov. 4, 1771. In 1776 he removed with his parents to the Moravian Settlement at Gracehill, near Ballymena, county of Antrim. Two years after he was sent to the Fulneck Seminary, Yorkshire. He left Fulneck in 1787, and entered a retail shop at Mirfield, near Wakefield. Soon tiring of that he entered upon a similar situation at Wath, near Rotherham, only to find it quite as unsuitable to his taste as the former. A journey to London, with the hope of finding a publisher for his youthful poems ended in failure; and in 1792 he was glad to leave Wath for Shefield to join Mr. Gales, an auctioneer, bookseller, and printer of the Sheffield Register newspap… Go to person page >

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Text Information

First Line: In the beginning, God said Be
Author: James Montgomery
Meter: 8.8.8.8
Language: English
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Notes

In the beginning God said "Be!" J. Montgomery. [Creation.] This hymn is dated in the original manuscript "Written at Dinsdale, Sep. 22, 1835." In 1853 it was included in Montgomery's Original Hymns, No. 2, in 4 stanzas of 4 lines, and entitled "The Creation and Dissolution of all Things." Its use is limited.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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