What if death my sleep invade

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What if death my sleep invade

Author: Philip Doddridge
Published in 8 hymnals

Representative Text

1 What if death my sleep invade?
Should I be of death afraid?
Whilst encircled by thine arm,
Death may strike, but cannot harm.

2 What if beams of opening day
Shine around my breathless clay?
Brighter visions from on high
Shall regale my mental eye.

3 Tender friends awhile may mourn
Me from their embraces torn;
Dearer, better friends I have
In the realms beyond the grave.

4 See the guardian-angels nigh
Wait to waft my soul on high!
See the golden gates display'd!
See the crown to grace my head!

5 See a flood of sacred light,
Which no more shall yield to night!
Transitory world, farewell!
Jesus calls with him to dwell!

6 With thy heavenly presence blest,
Death is life, and labour rest:
Welcome sleep, or death to me,
Still secure, for still with thee.

Source: Hymns, Selected and Original: for public and private worship (1st ed.) #636

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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 >

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