Sunday Morning Hymns

Inspired in part by camp meeting songs of the early 19th century, William Ralph Featherston wrote this hymn in 1864, shortly after his conversion when he was 16 years old. He died at age 27, before Adoniram Gordon set the text to the tune we use today and before it became a well-known inspirational hymn. The text is included so you can add your voice and sing along.

A hymn for Transfiguration Sunday by Rick Loader, set to the William H. Doane tune, Near the Cross.

Near to the Heart of God was a favorite of my wife’s grandmother. Cleland McAfee was a Presbyterian minister and educator who wrote the melody and text for this hymn in mourning the concurrent deaths of two of his nieces to diphtheria. The text is included so you can add your voice and sing along.

John Newton may be better know for writing Amazing Grace, but Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken has also stood the test of time. It has been set to a variety of tunes, JEFFERSON in The Sacred Harp, and most often to AUSTRIAN HYMN, a tune by Franz Joseph Haydn. BEACH SPRING, however, lends a light flow to the text. Newton’s text is included so you can add your voice and sing along.

Although this text is better known to many as the gospel hymn Marching to Zion, Isaac Watts wrote this text more than a century before Robert Lowry wrote a new tune and added a refrain. Watts’ text here is sung to St Thomas, and the text is included so you can add your voice and sing along.

I Need Thee Every Hour is a personal devotional hymn. The text by Annie Hawks addresses God, and it is written in the first person. Hymns like these offer a contrast to hymns that speak of God’s mighty acts, reminding us that God the almighty is also God ever near. Robert Lowry, a hymn writer who was also Hawks’ pastor, added the refrain. The text is included so that you can raise your voice and sing along.

The text for On Jordan’s Stormy Banks, or I Am Bound for the Promised Land, was written by English Baptist minister Samuel Stennett. In the United States, the hymn was paired with the tune THE PROMISED LAND, and it appears with this tune in The Sacred Harp and The Southern Harmony. The refrain was added in the U.S. by Rigdon McIntosh. The text is included so you can add your voice and sing along.

From contemporary hymnals, Reginald Heber’s poetry is most often sung when the congregation joins their voice to ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.’ Much of Heber’s hymn writing was intended to provide hymns that would relate to epistle and gospel lessons during the church year. Brightest and Best of the Stars of the Morning relates to the visit of the Magi and contemplates our own gifts to the Christ child. Heber’s text is included, so please add your voice and sing along.

Go Tell It on the Mountain was one of many African-American folk songs and spirituals collected and adapted by John W. Work during his tenure at Fisk University in Nashville. As director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Work helped Go Tell It on the Mountain become a well-known and widely sung Christmas song. The lyrics are included so you can add your voice and join in announcing the Savior’s birth.

O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.

This Christmas carol by Edmund Sears sets the angels announcement to the shepherds against the concerns and events of his day. Sears wrote the text in 1849, but its call to hear the angels’ message of peace and goodwill over the Babel sounds of the world have made this carol timeless. Sears’ text is included so that you can add your voice and sing along.