Edwin Hatch

Edwin Hatch (September 4, 1835 - November 10, 1889) was a member of the Anglican clergy and a renowned theologian and Biblical scholar.

He was ordained in 1859 after graduating from Oxford, and moved to Canada, where his first position was professor of classics at Trinity College in Toronto.  He returned to England in 1867, and worked at Oxford as vice-principal of St. Mary Hall until 1885.

Most of his writing was scholarly in nature, his most famous book being The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages Upon the Christian Church (1897).  Published after his death, it was compiled from a series of lectures he delivered in 1888.

His hymns and poetry, a much smaller percentage of his writing, were collected as Toward Fields of Light (1890).  Today's hymn had appeared earlier in Hatch's privately printed book, Between Doubt and Prayer (1878), and then in The Congregational Psalmist Hymnal  (1886).  J. R. Watson, in An Annotated Anthology of Hymns (2002), describes how the hymn "moves through various stages of Christian experience and discipline towards a unity with God."

Breathe on me, Breath of God,

Fill me with life anew,
That I may love what thou dost love,
And do what thou wouldst do.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Until my heart is pure,
Until with thee I will one will,
To do and to endure.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
Till I am wholly thine,
Until this earthly part of me
Glows with thy fire divine.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
So shall I never die,
But live with thee the perfect life
Of thine eternity.

Edwin Hatch, 1878
Tune: TRENTHAM (S.M.)
Robert Jackson, 1888

The tune TRENTHAM, by Robert Jackson, often appears with this text in American hymnals, but according to Watson, several different tunes are used in the United Kingdom.

Hatch continues to appear in hymnals to the present day, many more than in his own lifetime, thanks to this particular text which remains well-known.

New Mercies Shall New Songs Demand

Independence Day is not observed in all churches, and probably most often there is some acknowledgment of the occasion on the nearest Sunday, even if it's only an elaborate organ postlude of some patriotic song or other.

The Revised Common Lectionary does include scripture readings for the day itself for churches who have such services, so that means we can have a hymn based on a psalm for the day.  In this case, it's a partial paraphrase of Psalm 145, set to an appropriately muscular and majestic tune called NIAGARA (a great Native American name, no?).

Our helper, God, we bless your name,

Whose love forever is the same;

The tokens of whose gracious care

Begin and crown and close the year.

Amid ten thousand snares we stand,

Supported by your guardian hand;

And see, when we review our ways,

Ten thousand monuments of praise.

Thus far your arm has led us on;

Thus far we make your mercy known;

And while we tread this earthly land,

New mercies shall new songs demand.

Our grateful souls on Jordan’s shore

Shall raise one sacred pillar more,

Then bear, in your bright courts above,

Inscriptions of immortal love.

Philip Doddridge, 1755

Tune: NIAGARA (L.M.)

Robert Jackson, 19th cent.

Philip Doddridge, whose June 26 birthday I missed last week, wrote a number of psalm paraphrases among his many hymn texts, as they were much more widely used among the churches of the eighteenth century.  I think it suits this day quite well, a hymn of praise without the patriotic overtones that many people question, though the theme is clearly there in the third stanza.

Five Years Ago: God of creation, whose almighty hand

Three Years Ago: Many and great, O God, are thy things

One Year Ago: O beautiful, for spacious skies