1 Praise to thy name, eternal God,
For all the grace thou shed'st abroad;
For all thy influence from above,
To warm our souls with sacred love:
2 Bless'd be thy hand, which from the skies
Brought down this plant of Paradise,
And gave its heavenly beauties birth
To deck this wilderness of earth.
3 But why does that celestial flower
Open, and thrive, and shine no more?
Where are its balmy odors fled?
And why reclines its beauteous head?
4 Too plain, alas! the langour shews
Th' unkindly soil in which it grows;
Where the black frost and beating storm
Wither, and rend its tender form.
5 Unchanging sun thy beams display,
To drive the frost and storms away;
Make all thy potent virtues known
To cheer a plant so much thy own.
6 And thou, bless'd spirit deign to blow
Fresh gales of Heaven on shrubs below;
So shall they grow, and breathe abroad
A fragrance grateful to our God.
Source: A Selection of Hymns: from the best authors, intended to be an appendix to Dr. Watt's psalms and hymns. (1st Am. ed.) #CCCXXII
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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