How firm the saint's foundation stands

Author: Philip Doddridge

Philip Doddridge (b. London, England, 1702; d. Lisbon, Portugal, 1751) belonged to the Non-conformist Church (not associated with the Church of England). Its members were frequently the focus of discrimination. Offered an education by a rich patron to prepare him for ordination in the Church of England, Doddridge chose instead to remain in the Non-conformist Church. For twenty years he pastored a poor parish in Northampton, where he opened an academy for training Non-conformist ministers and taught most of the subjects himself. Doddridge suffered from tuberculosis, and when Lady Huntington, one of his patrons, offered to finance a trip to Lisbon for his health, he is reputed to have said, "I can as well go to heaven from Lisbon as from Nort… Go to person page >

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Text Information

Text Information

First Line:	How firm the saint's foundation stands
Author:	Philip Doddridge
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

So firm the saint's foundations stand. P. Doddridge. [Joy in Affliction.] This hymn is No. 3 of the D. MSS., in 4 stanzas of 4 lines, and headed, "The impoverished saint rejoicing in God, from Habakuk iii, 17." It is undated, but is found between two hymns dated respectively "Oct. 29, 1735," and "Nov. 16, 1735." This associates it with the year 1735. In 1755 it was published in Job Orton's posthumous edition of Doddridge's Hymn, No. 161, and again in J. D. Humphreys's edition of the same, 1739, No. 182. Its use is limited.

About 1741, a copy of the above-named manuscript was given by Lady Frances Gardiner to Robert Blair of Athelstaneford, Scotland, who, in 1742, became one of the Committee by whom the Draft of the Scottish Translations and Paraphrases of 1745 was compiled. In that Draft this hymn appeared as, "Secure the saint's foundation stands." In 1748 the Presbytery of Edinburgh proposed to add an alternative version of the same passage (Habakkuk iii. 17), in 4 stanzas, and probably made by Dr. Hugh Blair. The Assembly's Committee, however, not seeing the need for two versions of the same passage of Holy Scripture, adopted stanzas i.-iii. of Blair's version, and stanzas iii. from Doddridge's hymn as stanzas iv., and gave the cento as "What tho' no flowers the fig-tree clothe," in their Draft Translations and Paraphrases, of 1751. In the Draft of 1781 it was repeated, with slight alterations, and a new stanza, beginning, "He to my tardy feet shall lend." In the authorized issue of the Translations and Paraphrases, of 1781 it finally appeared as No. xxxii., the only alteration from the Draft of the same year being in lines 3 and 4 of the new stanza. This last alteration is attributed by the eldest daughter of W. Cameron to John Logan. The correct designation therefore of the authorized text is P. Doddridge, 1735; Scottish Translations and Paraphrases, 1745; Dr. H. Blair, 1748 and 1751; and J. Logan, 1781. Miss J. E. Leeson rewrote this hymn as "Although the fig-tree blossom not," for her Paraphrases and Hymns, 1853. There is also a cento in T. Darling's Hymns for the Church of England, ed., 1889, in 3 stanzas of 6 lines, beginning, "What though the fig-tree's strength decay”? This is by Mr. Darling based upon the 1781 text as above.

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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