Hymn: Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven
LindaJo McKim writes, “This hymn text is one of two
paraphrases of Psalm 103 by Henry Francis Lyte in Spirit of the Psalms (1834). The original hymn had five stanzas.
The fourth has been omitted from Presbyterian hymnals since the turn of the
[twentieth] century. It reads: Frail as summer’s flower we flourish;/Blows the
wind and it is gone; But, while mortals rise and perish,/God endures unchanging
on: Praise Him! praise Him! Praise Him! praise Him! Praise the high eternal
One!”
Hymn: Make Me a Captive, Lord
This hymn by George Matheson was first published in his only
poetic work Sacred Songs (1890). He
titled it “Christian Freedom.” Matheson was a Scottish pastor who, although
blind, was an accomplished author and poet. He is perhaps best known for his
hymn “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.”
Hymn: What a Friend We Have in Jesus
Scholars dispute the circumstances surrounding the writing
of this text by Joseph Scriven. One story tells of the sudden death of his
bride-to-be the night before their wedding. Another says the hymn was sent to
Scriven’s mother in Dublin, Ireland, as a source of comfort when she was
seriously ill. When Ira Sankey asked about the hymn’s origin, Scriven said he
had composed it for his mother. This hymn is extremely popular in Korea and at
the request of Korean Presbyterians it appears in The Presbyterian Hymnal (1990) in Korean as well as English.
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