Servant of God, well done! Thy glorious warfare's past. C. Wesley. [Death and Burial of a Minister.] This hymn, in 4 stanzas of 8 lines, was printed at the end of the Funeral Sermon by John Wesley, on the death of G. Whitefield. (Poetical Works, 1868-72, vol. vi. 316.) Whitefield died on Sept. 30, 1770, and J. Wesley preached the Funeral Sermon at the Tabernacle, Tottenham Court Road, and again at Moorfields on Nov. 18, 1770. He also preached on the same subject at Greenwich and at Deptford. His remark in his Journal is, “In every place I wish to show all possible respect to the memory of that great and good man." It must be noted that this hymn is a distinct piece from C. Wesley's Elegy on the Death of the Rev. George Whitefield.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
James Montgomery (b. Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, 1771; d. Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, 1854), the son of Moravian parents who died on a West Indies mission field while he was in boarding school, Montgomery inherited a strong religious bent, a passion for missions, and an independent mind. He was editor of the Sheffield Iris (1796-1827), a newspaper that sometimes espoused radical causes. Montgomery was imprisoned briefly when he printed a song that celebrated the fall of the Bastille and again when he described a riot in Sheffield that reflected unfavorably on a military commander. He also protested against slavery, the lot of boy chimney sweeps, and lotteries. Associated with Christians of various persuasions, Montgomery supported missio… Go to person page >
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