Jesus, at Thy command. [Life a Voyage—Christ the Pilot.] This hymn is in an undated edition of Lady Huntingdon's Collection of Hymns, published at Bath about 1774. It is No. 136, in 7 stanzas of 6 lines. It is also given in Coughlan's 1775 Appendix to J. Bazlee's [q. v.] Select Collection of Psalms & Hymns, No. 311, where it is entitled, "The Believer's Pilot.” In 1776 it reappeared in A. M. Toplady's Psalms & Hymns, No. 312, in De Courcy's Collection, 2nd edition, 1782, and again in later hymn-books. In modern collections it is sometimes attributed to Toplady, and again to De Courcy (q. v.), but in error. It is associated with the Lady Huntingdon Connexion from the first, and is possibly by one of that denomination. A part of this hymn is given in the American Church Pastorals, Boston, 1864, as, "By faith, I see the land." It begins with stanza v., and is taken from Toplady's Psalms & Hymns, as above.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
Toplady, Augustus Montague, the author of "Rock of Ages," was born at Farnham, Surrey, November 4, 1740. His father was an officer in the British army. His mother was a woman of remarkable piety. He prepared for the university at Westminster School, and subsequently was graduated at Trinity College, Dublin. While on a visit in Ireland in his sixteenth year he was awakened and converted at a service held in a barn in Codymain. The text was Ephesians ii. 13: "But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." The preacher was an illiterate but warm-hearted layman named Morris. Concerning this experience Toplady wrote: "Strange that I, who had so long sat under the means of grace in England, should b… Go to person page >
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