Hearken ye children of your God

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 >

Hearken, ye children of your God. P. Doddridge. [Spiritual growth enforced.] First published in J. Orton's posthumous edition of Doddridge's Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 300, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines; and again, with slight changes, in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1839. In Rippon's Selection,1787, No. 470, it was altered to "Attend, ye children of your God." This is repeated in several collections in America. In the Baptist Psalms & Hymns, 1858, stanzas ii., iii.-v., are given as "Baptised into our Saviour's death, Our souls," &c. This is also repeated in other collections.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)