God, you have given us power to sound

God, you have given us power to sound. George Wallace Briggs* (1875-1959). This hymn appeared first in the London national newspaper, The Sunday Times, 10 January 1954. It had three stanzas, and was entitled ‘The New Peril’. It appeared without comment, but it was written at the height of the Cold War during the anxiety about the use of nuclear power. Briggs later wrote a four-stanza text, which he published in Hymns of the Faith (1957), the book that he compiled for use in Worcester Cathedral. It was included in a section on ‘Science’ and entitled ‘The Perils of Knowledge’, although the hymn is really a prayer for wisdom to accompany knowledge, as in stanza 2:   Great are your gifts, yet...