Witness of Adoption

Sovereign of all the worlds on high

Author: Philip Doddridge
Published in 95 hymnals

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Representative Text

1 Sovereign of all the worlds on high,
Allow my humble claim;
Nor, while a worm would raise their head,
Disdain a Father’s name.

2 My Father God! How sweet the sound!
How tender, and how dear!
Not all the harmony of heaven
Could so delight the ear.

3 Come, sacred spirit, seal the name
On my expanding heart;
And shew, that in Jehovah’s grace
I share a filial part.

4 Cheer'd by a signal so divine,
Unwavering I believe;
And Abba, Father, humbly cry,
Nor can thy sign deceive.

Source: A Collection of Evangelical Hymns #LXXVI

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: Sovereign of all the worlds on high
Title: Witness of Adoption
Author: Philip Doddridge
Meter: 8.6.8.6
Language: English
Copyright: Public Domain

Notes

Sovereign of all the worlds on high. P. Doddridge. [Adoption.] This is No. 78 in the D. MSS., in 5 stanzas of 4 lines, is headed, "Adoption argued from a filial temper, on Gal. iv. 6," and is dated "June 17, 1739." It was repeated, without alteration, in Job Orton's posthumous edition of Doddridge's Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 281, but with the title changed to "A filial Temper the Work of the Spirit, and a proof of Adoption. Gal. iv. 6." In J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1839, No. 307, the 1755 heading is repeated, but the text is changed in stanzas iv. 1. 3, from "Thou know'st, I Abba, Father, cry," to "And thus, I Abba, Father, cry." It is in common use in its original form, and as, “ My Father God! how sweet the sound" (stanzas ii.).

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Timeline

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The Cyber Hymnal #10616
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The Cyber Hymnal #10616

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