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SDA HYMNAL (1985) WORSHIP

SDAH 005: All My Hope On God Is Founded

WORSHIP >> Adoration & Praise

SDAH 5

All my hope on God is founded;
He doth still my trust renew.
Me through change and chance He guideth,
Only good and only true.

Text
Text

1
All my hope on God is founded;
He doth still my trust renew.
Me through change and chance He guideth,
Only good and only true.
God unknown, He alone
Calls my heart to be His own.

2
Pride of man and earthly glory,
Sword and crown betray his trust;
What with care and toil he buildeth,
Tower and temple fall to dust.
But God’s power, hour by hour,
Is my temple and my tower.

3
God’s great goodness aye endureth,
Deep His wisdom, passing thought;
Splendor, light and life attend Him,
Beauty springeth out of naught.
Love doth stand at His hand;
Joy doth wait on His command.

4
Still from man to God eternal,
Sacrifice of praise be done.
High above all praises praising,
For the gift of Christ His son.
Christ doth call one and all:
Ye who follow shall not fall.

Hymn Info
Hymn Info


Biblical Reference
(a) 1 Tim 1:16 (b)Prov 29:23 (c) Ps 92:5 (d) Ps 16:11 (e) Heb 13:15

Author
Joachim Neander (1650-1680)

Translator
Robert Bridges (1844-1930)

Performance Suggestions
Unison

Copyright
Music reproduced by permission of Novello & Company Limited.

Hymn Tune
MICHAEL

Metrical Number
8.7.8.7.3.3.7.

Composer
Herbert Howells (1892-1983)

Year Composed
1936

Theme
ADORATION & PRAISE

Get the hymn sheet in other keys here

The year was 1670. The Pietist movement was sweeping fast across the Protestant areas of Germany. Many sermons placed an emphasis on personal religion. And at St. Martin’s church in Bremen, it was no different.

Using 1 Peter 1 as a basis of his sermon, the preacher gave a powerful call to a real spiritual rebirth, a true inward holiness.

In the midst of the congregation, a young man listened, dumbfounded and abashed. He and his friend came to church with every intention to make a joke out of the whole sermon. But as he listened, the discourse turned out to be nothing like he heard before. New, not really. But it was definitely straight, heartfelt and earnest.

The preacher, Theodore Undereyk, a pioneer of pietism in the German Reformed Church. The wild 20-year old young man, Joachim Neander, the hymn writer for the famous hymn, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.”

But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.

Notes

When we try to run away from God’s presence: when like Cain we try to do things on our own, we become restless. We try to fill the yearning for divine grace with things, human relationships or overly busy lives. Cain started to build a dynasty and a city. Both  are great achievements and speak of determination and energy, but if it is a godless dynasty and a rebellious city, it will ultimately amount to nothing. (Lesson 1, 3rd Quarter 2021 -Thursday, A Restless Wanderer, 7/01/2021)

Joachim Neander (1650-1680; see Biographies) wrote the original of this hymn in German as a prayer for mealtime. Robert Seymour Bridges, appointed poet laureate of England in 1913, used only a portion of the first stanza of Neander’s poem as a basis for what in reality is an original hymn.

The hymn first appeared, along with some of his other hymns, in The Yattendon Hymnal, 1899, a supplement intended for use only in his own church at Yattendon, near Oxford. However, it later came to be considered one of the first attempts to improve the quality of English hymns, and editors of hymnbooks have been mining its riches ever since.

Born October 23, 1844, at Walmer, Kent, England, of a wealthy family, Bridges studied medicine at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. He served in several London hospitals before tuberculosis forced his retirement at age 37. During the year 1924, he and his wife, Mary, were guests at the University of Michigan, where he received an honorary doctorate. The same honor was accorded him at Harvard and at Oxford and St. Andrews universities. Death came on April 21, 1930, at Boar’s Hill in Oxford.

The tune MICHAEL, written by Herbert Howells, was first published in the Clarendon Hymnbook, 1936. Its freshness and creativity of harmony and melody went almost unnoticed until about 1964, when it began to appear in several hymnals, among them the hymnal of the United Church of Christ, U.S.A., 1974.

Howells, born October 17, 1892, at Lydney, Gloucestershire, studied with Herbert Brewer at Gloucester Cathedral and was his apprentice there from 1909 and 1911. The quality of his original compositions soon won him a scholarship at the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied with the great Charles V. Stanford (see SDAH 32), Hubert Parry, and Walford Davies. After a short stint as substitute organist at Salisbury Cathedral, he was in poor health for three years. Later he served as teacher of composition at the Royal College of Music for more than 50 years, and director of music at St. Paul’s Girls School, in London; he followed Gustav Holst in the latter position.

Howells’ long list of compositions includes work for chorus, organ, and piano, as well as solos and church service music. In 1923 he toured the United States and Canada. He was granted a D.Music. from Cambridge University in 1961. Before his death he was much in demand as adjudicator of music competitions. Having been raised in the Congregational church and later holding membership in both the Church of England and the Methodist Church, respectively, he brought to his involvement in hymnody a rich experience. In 1965 he was appointed treasurer of the British Hymn Society. He died February 23, 1983.

MICHAEL is used also for SDAH 59, “Great Our Joy as Now We Gather.”

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