Affliction is a stormy deep

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Affliction is a stormy deep

Author: Nathaniel Cotton
Published in 85 hymnals

Representative Text

1 Affliction is a stormy deep,
Where wave resounds to wave;
Though o'er my head the billows roll,
I know the Lord can save.

2 The hand that now withholds my joys
Can reinstate my peace:
And He who bade the tempest roar,
Can bid that tempest cease.

3 In the dark watches of the night,
I'll count His mercies o'er;
I'll praise Him for ten thousand past,
And humbly sue for more.

4 When darkness and when sorrows rose
And pressed on every side,
The Lord has still sustained my steps,
And still has been my Guide.

5 Here will I rest, and build my hopes,
Nor murmur at His rod;
He's more than all the world to me,
My Health, my Life, my God!

Source: Church Book: for the use of Evangelical Lutheran congregations #479

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Author: Nathaniel Cotton

Cotton, Nathaniel, M.D., born in 1707, and educated for the medical profession at Leyden. Giving his attention more especially to brain diseases, he first assisted a physician, who devoted his attention to the insane, at Dunstable; and they erected a large Asylum at St. Albans. In 1763 the poet Cowper became one of his patients, and, on his recovery, conceived a warm attachment for his medical friend. Dr. Cotton died at St Albans, Aug. 2, 1788. Several of his hymns appeared from 1760 onwards in Dr. Dodd's Christian's Magazine, some signed "Dr. Cotton, St. Albans," some “N.," and some without signature. His poetical works were published posthumously:— Various Pieces in Verse and Prose, 2 vols., Lond., Dodsley, 1791; and Visions in Verse,… Go to person page >

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First Line:	Affliction is a stormy deep
Author:	Nathaniel Cotton
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Affliction is a stormy deep. Nathaniel Cotton. [Affliction.] Part of his rendering of Ps. xiii., which appeared as "With fierce desire the hunted hart," in Dr. Dodd's Christian's Magazine, April, 1761, in 12 stanzas of 4 lines, and signed "N." It was republished in his (posthumous) Various Pieces in Verse and Prose, 1791. In 1812 Collyer divided it into two hymns, Nos. 59-60, in his Collection, the second beginning "Affliction is a stormy deep," in 5 stanzas. These stanzas were transferred, with two slight alterations, to Stowell's Selection, 1831, and, sometimes with numerous alterations, to other hymnals, including Elliott's Psalms & Hymns 1835, and Bickersteth, Christian Psalmody, 1833. Windle's text, in his Met. Psalter, Ps. 42, is from Stowell's Selection 1831. Its modern use is not so extensive in Great Britain as in America.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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