New Year's Day

Representative Text

1 Now, gracious Lord, thine arm reveal,
And make thy glory known;
Now let us all thy presence feel,
And soften hearts of stone!

2 Help us to venture near thy throne,
And plead a Savior's name;
For all that we can call our own,
Is vanity and shame.

3 From all the guilt of former sin
May mercy set us free;
And let the year we now begin,
Begin and end with thee.

4 Send down thy spirit from above,
That saints may love thee more;
And sinners now may learn to love
Who never loved before.

5 And when before thee we appear
In our eternal home;
May growing numbers worship here,
And praise thee in our room.

The Christian's duty, exhibited in a series of hymns, 1791

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Author: John Newton

John Newton (b. London, England, 1725; d. London, 1807) was born into a Christian home, but his godly mother died when he was seven, and he joined his father at sea when he was eleven. His licentious and tumul­tuous sailing life included a flogging for attempted desertion from the Royal Navy and captivity by a slave trader in West Africa. After his escape he himself became the captain of a slave ship. Several factors contributed to Newton's conversion: a near-drowning in 1748, the piety of his friend Mary Catlett, (whom he married in 1750), and his reading of Thomas à Kempis' Imitation of Christ. In 1754 he gave up the slave trade and, in association with William Wilberforce, eventually became an ardent abolitionist. After becoming a tide… Go to person page >

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Text Information

First Line: Now, gracious Lord, Thine arm reveal
Title: New Year's Day
Author: John Newton
Language: English
Copyright: Public Domain
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Notes

Now gracious Lord, Thine arm reveal. J. Newton. [The New Year.] The first of thirteen hymns to be sung "Before Annual Sermons to Young People, on New Years' Evenings," first published in the Olney Hymns, 1779, Bk. ii., No. 7., in 5 stanzas of 4 lines, and headed "Prayer for a Blessing." (Original text, Hymnal Companion, No. 90.) Its use is very extensive in all English-speaking countries; it has also been translated into several languages.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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Tune

MARTYRDOM (Wilson)

MARTYRDOM was originally an eighteenth-century Scottish folk melody used for the ballad "Helen of Kirkconnel." Hugh Wilson (b. Fenwick, Ayrshire, Scotland, c. 1766; d. Duntocher, Scotland, 1824) adapted MARTYRDOM into a hymn tune in duple meter around 1800. A triple-meter version of the tune was fir…

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ST. PETER (Reinagle)

Composed by Alexander R. Reinagle (b. Brighton, Sussex, England, 1799; d. Kidlington, Oxfordshire, England, 1877), ST. PETER was published as a setting for Psalm 118 in Reinagle's Psalm Tunes for the Voice and Pianoforte (c. 1836). The tune first appeared with Newton's text in Hymns Ancient and Mode…

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NEW BRITAIN

NEW BRITAIN (also known as AMAZING GRACE) was originally a folk tune, probably sung slowly with grace notes and melodic embellishments. Typical of the Appalachian tunes from the southern United States, NEW BRITAIN is pentatonic with melodic figures that outline triads. It was first published as a hy…

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All tunes published with 'New Year's Day'^ top

Timeline

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Media

The Cyber Hymnal #11825
  • PDF (PDF)
  • Noteworthy Composer Score (NWC)
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Instances in all hymnals

Instances (1 - 3 of 3)

Church Hymnal, Mennonite #588

Church Hymnal, Mennonite #588

The Baptist Hymnal #704

The Baptist Hymnal #704
TextScoreAudio

The Cyber Hymnal #11825

The Cyber Hymnal #11825
Include 140 pre-1979 instances
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