Commit thou all thy griefs

Commit thou all thy griefs. Paul Gerhardt* (1607-1676), translated by John Wesley* (1703-1791). This is a free translation of Gerhardt’s ‘Befiehl du deine Wege’*. Gerhardt’s hymn is a Lutheran acrostic, and Wesley makes no attempt to follow that (the omission of stanzas, and the change of language, would have made it impossible). The translation was first published in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739), with the title ‘Trust in Providence. From the German.’ Wesley himself omitted it from A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists (1780), but it was included in the Supplement of 1831, and it has remained, with alterations and some shortening, in most Methodist books since...