Children of the heavenly King

Children of the heavenly King. John Cennick* (1718-55). First published in Cennick’s Sacred Hymns for the Children of God, in the Days of their Pilgrimage, Part III (1742). It had twelve stanzas, and was described in JJ as an ‘Encouragement to Praise’. The text was shortened to six stanzas (1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8) by George Whitefield* in A Collection of Hymns for Social Worship (1753), and this was followed by Martin Madan* in his Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1760). In this six-stanza form it was for many years Cennick’s most popular hymn. It appeared in most major collections of the 18th and 19th centuries, and there was even a Latin translation of one version of it in Richard Bingham’s...