Thine Forever, God of Love

Author: Mary Fawler Maude

Maude, Mary Fawler, née Hooper, daughter of George Henry Hooper, of Stanmore, Middlesex, was married in 1841 to the late Joseph Maude, some time Vicar of Chirk, near Ruabon, and Hon. Canon of St. Asaph, who died in Feb. 1887. Mrs. Maude's hymns were published in her Twelve Letters on Confirmation, 1848, and in Memorials of Past Years, 1852 (privately printed). Her best known hymn, is "Thine for ever, God of love" (Confirmation). Concerning it Mrs. Maude says: -- "It was written in 1847 for my class in the Girls' Sunday School of St. Thomas, Newport, Isle of Wight, and published in 1848 at the beginning of a little book called ‘Twelve Letters on Confirmation,' by a Sunday School Teacher, and reprinted in the Memorials, 1852." [S. MSS… Go to person page >

Thine for ever, God of love, p. 720, i. The original text of the five stanzas which constitute this hymn in Church Hymns, 1903, was restored at the special request of Mrs. Maude. This restored text is also repeated in Hymns Ancient & Modern, 1904; and The English Hymnal, 1906. An extended note of considerable interest is in Brownlie's Hymns & Hymn Writers of the Church Hymnary, (London: H. Frowde, 1899), pp. 238-9. In the Strand Magazine of May 1895, there is a portrait of Mrs. Maude, and a facsimile of the original manuscript.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)