Repairing to Christ, the Fountain of Life

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Hail, everlasting Spring

Author: Philip Doddridge
Tune: MILLINGTON (Holyoke)
Published in 26 hymnals

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Representative Text

Hail! everlasting spring,
Celestial fountain, hail!
Thy streams salvation bring,
The waters never fail.
Still they endure,
And still they flow,
For all our woe
And sovreign cure.

Source: Harmonia Americana: containing a concise introduction to the grounds of music; with a variety of airs, suitable fore divine worship and the use of musical societies; consisting of three and four parts #27

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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:	Hail, everlasting Spring
Title:	Repairing to Christ, the Fountain of Life
Author:	Philip Doddridge
Meter:	6.6.6.6.4.4.4.4
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Hail, everlasting Spring. P. Doddridge. The Living Fountain.] This hymn, based on Zech. xiii. 1, is dated in the Doddridge Manuscript " Nov. 7, 1736." It was first published in J. Orton's edition of Doddridge's (posthumous) Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 170, in 3 stanzas of 8 lines, and again in J. p. Humphrey's edition of the same, 1839, No. 191, and in each case without alteration. In Hymns & Songs of Praise, N. Y., 1874, No. 515, it is given unaltered and in full. Elliott, in his Psalms & Hymns, 1835, No. 83, attributes the hymn to "Dodd," and this has been quoted as the author's name. It is simply a contraction of "Doddridge."

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)