These words appear in Hymns of Faith and Hope, 2nd Series, 1861, by Horatius Bonar. The hymn was entitled “The Love of God” and consisted of 10 stanzas, of which we have Nos. 1, 2, 6, 9, and 10.

Horatius Bonar was born on December 19, 1808, in Edinburgh, Scotland. At the university in Edinburg he came under the influence of Thomas Chalmers and Edward Irving. The former inspired him to become a minister of the gospel, and the latter, to study the prophecies of the Bible. Bonar began his ministerial duties in the church of St. John’s, Leith, in 1833, in one of the slum areas of Edinburg. Since he found the children bored with singing psalms, he began to write original hymns to attract their interest. The result was a great interest in the Sunday school. At the time, psalm singing was the only form allowed in the Presbyterian Church. Bonar was ordained a minister of the Church of Scotland in 1837 and appointed to Kelso. At the disruption in 1843, when the Scottish Church split, he followed his teacher Chalmers into the newly formed Free Church of Scotland, remaining at Kelso. In 1853 he received the D.D. degree from the University of Aberdeen. In 1866 he was transferred to the Chalmers Memorial Church in Edinburgh, where he remained for 21 years, until his retirement. He was appointed moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in 1883, and died at Edinburgh on July 31, 1889. He was noted for his diligence, his piety, his visiting, and his prayer life. He wrote about 600 hymns, 60 translations of the psalms, and hundreds of tracts. His hymns are subjective and appealing; his purpose was to fill them with the love and light of Christ. During the revival of 1873-1874 in Scotland under Moody and Sankey, he wrote hymns, especially for Sankey. He published several hymn collections, among them Songs of the Wilderness, 1843 and 1844; Bible HymnBook, 1845; and Hymns of Faith and Hope, 1857, 1861, and 1866. Bonar was a devout student of prophecy and edited the Quarterly Journal of Prophecy from its inception in 1848 until its cessation in 1873, and regularly contributed a new hymn to its pages. He believed in the imminent return of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is evidently in many of his hymns.

His other contributions to SDAH are Nos. 217, “The Church Haas Waited Long”; 298, “I Lay My Sins on Jesus”; and 465, “I Heard the Voice of Jesus.”

OMBERSLEY was composed in 1872 by William Henry Gladstone, the eldest son of William Ewart Gladstone, the Grand Old Man of English politics, four times prime minister of Great Britain. He was born on June 3, 1840, on the family estate in the castle of Hawarden, Flintshire, north Wales, and educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. He was a classical scholar and an accomplished guitarist, but chose to follow a career in politics, being an elected member of Parliament for Chester for three years, for Whitby for 12 years, and for East Worcestershire for five years. He composed 10 hymn tunes and chants, anthems, and organ voluntaries; also, he edited A Selection of Hymns and Tunes, 1882. OMBERSLEY first appeared in The Hymnary, 1872, but was set to other words. It is named after a village near Worcester in the constituency that Gladstone later represented in the House of Commons. Gladstone died in Westminster, London, on July 4, 1891.