How Gentle God's Commands

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How gentle God's commands!

Author: Philip Doddridge (1755)
Tune: DENNIS (Nägeli)
Published in 669 hymnals

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Audio files: MIDI

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Representative Text

1 How gentle God’s commands!
How kind His precepts are!
Come, cast your burdens on the Lord,
And trust His constant care.

2 While Providence supports,
Let saints securely dwell;
That hand which bears all nature up
Shall guard His children well.

3 Why should this anxious load
Press down your weary mind?
Haste to your heavenly Father’s throne,
And sweet refreshment find.

4 His goodness stands approved,
Down to the present day:
I’ll drop my burden at His feet,
And bear a song away.

Source: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal #81

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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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First Line:	How gentle God's commands!
Title:	How Gentle God's Commands
Author:	Philip Doddridge (1755)
Meter:	6.6.8.6
Language:	English
Notes:	Spanish translation: See "Qué tierno padre de Dios" by Vernon L. Peterson
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Tune

Frequency of use

DENNIS (Nägeli)

Lowell Mason (PHH 96) arranged DENNIS and first published it in The Psaltery (1845), a hymnal he compiled with George. Webb (PHH 559). Mason attributed the tune to Johann G. Nageli (b. Wetzikon, near Zurich, Switzerland, 1773; d. Wetzikon, 1836) but included no source reference. Nageli presumably pu…

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