Awake, sweet gratitude, and sing. A. M. Toplady. [Christ's Intercession.] In the Gospel Magazine, 1771, this hymn is given in 10 stanza of 61. From the Gospel Magazine it passed at an early date into various collections, but in an abbreviated form. These included Rippon's Selection, 1787, to which possibly, more than to any other hymnal, modern collections are indebted for their text both in Great Britain, and America. The full original text was included in Sedgwick's reprint of Toplady's Hymns, 1860, p. 150. It is curious to note that this hymn was omitted from Toplady's Psalms and Hymns, 1776, and from an edition of his Hymns, published in 1856.
-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
Toplady, Augustus Montague, the author of "Rock of Ages," was born at Farnham, Surrey, November 4, 1740. His father was an officer in the British army. His mother was a woman of remarkable piety. He prepared for the university at Westminster School, and subsequently was graduated at Trinity College, Dublin. While on a visit in Ireland in his sixteenth year he was awakened and converted at a service held in a barn in Codymain. The text was Ephesians ii. 13: "But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." The preacher was an illiterate but warm-hearted layman named Morris. Concerning this experience Toplady wrote: "Strange that I, who had so long sat under the means of grace in England, should b… Go to person page >
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