Let Not Your Hearts

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Let not your hearts with anxious thoughts

Author: William Robertson
Published in 18 hymnals

Representative Text

1 Let not your hearts with anxious thoughts
be troubled or dismay'd;
but trust in Providence divine,
and trust my gracious aid.
2 I to my Father’s house return;
there num'rous mansions stand,
and glory manifold abounds
through all the happy land.

3 I go your entrance to secure,
and your abode prepare;
regions unknown are safe to you,
when I, your friend, am there.
4 Thence shall I come, when ages close,
to take you home with me;
there we shall meet to part no more,
and still together be.

5 I am the way, the truth, the life:
no son of human race,
but such as I conduct and guide,
shall see my Father’s face.

Source: The Irish Presbyterian Hymnbook #R42

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Author: William Robertson

Robertson, William, was the son of David Robertson of Brunton in Fife. After finishing his University course he was licensed to preach in 1711. He is said to have been assistant to the minister of the Presbyterian Church of London Wall, London, before his settlement, in 1714, as parish minister of Borthwick, Midlothian. In 1733 he was appointed minister of Lady Yesters, Edinburgh, and in 1736 of Old Greyfriars, and died at Edinburgh, Nov. 16, 1745. He was in 1742 appointed a member of the Committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which compiled the Translations and Paraphrases of 1745, and is said to have contributed 3 paraphrases which, in the 1781 collection, are numbered 25, "How few receive with cordial faith" (p. 536… Go to person page >

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First Line:	Let not your hearts with anxious thoughts
Title:	Let Not Your Hearts
Author:	William Robertson
Meter:	8.6.8.6
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

John 14:1-7
(hymns)

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Notes

Let not your hearts with anxious thoughts. William Robertson. [Ascension.] First appeared as No. 14 in the Draft Scottish Translations and Paraphrases, 1745, as a version of John xiv. 1-5, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines. In the Draft of 1781, No. 42, stanza iii. was omitted; st. iv, rewritten; and stanza i. slightly altered.
Thence, unaltered, in the public-worship edition issued in that year by the Church of Scotland and still in use. In the markings by the eldest daughter of W. Cameron the original is ascribed to Robertson, and the alterations in the 1781 text to Cameron. The revised text of 1781 is included in the English Presbyterian Psalms & Hymns, 1867, and a few other collections. In Porter's Selection, Glasgow, 1853, it is altered to "Let not your hearts—His Jesus speaks," and in the Twickenham Chapel Collection, 1845, p. 60, to "Let not your hearts be troubled now." [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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