Thrice happy souls, who born from heaven. P. Doddridge. [Walking with God.] This is No. 37 in the Doddridge manuscript in 8 stanzas of 4 lines, headed, "Of spending the day with God," from Prov. xxiii. 17, and dated "March 27, 1737." In J. Orton's posthumous edition of Doddridge's Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 79, it was given with several changes in the text, and with the heading altered to "Walking with God; or, being in His fear all the day long." Proverbs xxiii. 17; and again in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1839, No. 93. This text again differs from both the above. That however in common use is from Orton. In the Baptist Psalms & Hymns, 1858, No. 445, stanzas v., vi., iv. and iii., are given as, "Lord, we must labour, we must care." Both this and the text as in Orton are in several collections.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
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 >
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