In early 1829 the London Board of Congregational ministers gathered for study and counsel. One of their recommendations was to set aside the coming Good Friday as a day of humiliation and prayer, that by the grace of God a revival of religion might be promoted in the churches of Great Britain. One of their number, Andrew Reed, wrote this hymn of seven stanzas as a prayer for himself and his fellow ministers, and it was sung on Good Friday. It was printed in the Evangelical Magazine, June 1829, entitled “Hymn to the Spirit,” and then in Reed’s Hymn Book, 1842. Reed also wrote SDAH 268, “Holy Spirit, Light Divine.”

     Andrew Reed was born on November 27, 1787, in London, the son of a watchmaker who was a Congregational lay preacher. He trained at Hackney College in 1807 for the Congregational ministry and was ordained in 1811. His first pastorate was at St. George’s-in-the-East, where he had been a member previously. His ministry was successful to the point that the increased congregation caused so much overcrowding that a new building, the Wycliffe Chapel, was built, where he ministered from 1831 until his retirement in 1861. Yale University honored him with a D.D. degree when he visited the United States in 1834. A great philanthropist, he was a major factor in founding an orphanage at Clapton, east London; another one in Croydon, south London; an asylum for idiots in Surrey; the Royal Hospital for Incurables in Surrey; another asylum for idiots in the Eastern Counties in the Essex; and yet another orphanage for infants at Wanstead, northeast London. Apart from the £100,000 he raised for these projects, a huge sum in those days, he actively supported missionary work. In 1817 he published a collection of hymns that contained 21 of his own. This was enlarged in 1825 and superseded in 1842. To SDAH he also contributed N0. 268, “Holy Spirit, Light Divine.” He died at Cambridge Health, Hackney, on February 25, 1862.

     GRÄFENBERG carries the name of a spa town about 30 miles southeast of Bayreuth in Bavaria, but with no association with the composer, Johann Crüger (1598-1662; see SDAH 239). The tune appears in his Praxis Pietatis Melica, 2^nd edition, 1647, and also in the 1653 edition. Cruger also composed tunes for SDAH 239, JESU, MEINE FREUDE; and SDAH 559, NUN DANKET.