Almighty God, Thy word is cast

Almighty God, Thy word is cast. John Cawood* (1775-1852). Written in 1816, and first published in Thomas Cotterill*’s suppressed Eighth Edition of his Selection of Psalms and Hymns for Public Worship (1819), in five stanzas. It was entitled ‘After a Sermon’. It was based on Mark 4: 3-9. It was printed in James Montgomery*’s Christian Psalmist (Glasgow, 1825), and other books, including Godfrey Thring*’s A Church of England Hymn Book (1880), and became widely known. There are two texts of this hymn. One is from Cotterill’s Selection; the other from what (according to JJ, p. 53) was the original manuscript, printed in Roundell Palmer*’s The Book of Praise (1862), and Charles Rogers’s Lyra...