Behold, with pleasing ecstasy

Representative Text

1 Behold with pleasing ecstasy
The Gospel standard lifted high,
That all the nations from afar
May in the great salvation share.

2 Why then, almighty Savior, why
Do wretched souls in millions die?
While wide th’infernal tyrant reigns
O’er spacious realms in ponderous chains?

3 And shall he still go on to boast
Thy cross its energy hath lost?
And shall Thy servants still complain
Their labors, and their tears are vain?

4 Awake, all conquering arm, awake,
And hell’s extensive empire shake;
Assert the honors of Thy throne,
And call this ruined world Thine own.

5 Thine all successful power display;
Produce a nation in a day;
For at Thy word this barren earth
Shall travail with a general birth.

6 Swift let Thy quickening Spirit breathe
On these abodes of sin and death;
That breath shall bow ten thousand minds,
Like waving corn before the winds.

7 Scarce can our glowing hearts endure
A world, where Thou art known more;
Transform it, Lord, by conquering love,
Or bear us to the realms above.

Source: The Cyber Hymnal #8194

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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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Text Information

Text Information

First Line:	Behold, with pleasing ecstasy
Author:	Philip Doddridge
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Behold with pleasing extacy. P. Doddridge. [Missions.] This hymn is No. 48 in the D. MSS., and dated "Oct. 30, 1737." It was published in Job Orton's edition of Doddridge's (posthumous) Hymns, 1755, No. 121, in 7 stanzas of 4 lines, in a slightly different form, and entitled “A Nation born in a day; or the rapid progress of the Gospel desired", Is. lxvi. 8, and again in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1839. In its original form it has not come into common use: but stanzas iv. and v., beginning, "Awake, all conquering arm, awake," very slightly altered, were given in the American Baptist Psalmist, 1813, No. 857. Also in Spurgeon's Our Own Hymn Book, 1866, No. 962.

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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Tune

OLD HUNDREDTH

This tune is likely the work of the composer named here, but has also been attributed to others as shown in the instances list below. According to the Handbook to the Baptist Hymnal (1992), Old 100th first appeared in the Genevan Psalter, and "the first half of the tune contains phrases which may ha…

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Timeline

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Arrangements

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