God has spoken—by his prophets

God has spoken—by his prophets. George Wallace Briggs* (1875-1959). This hymn was written for the Hymn Society of America, which advertised for new hymns to celebrate the publication of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible in 1952. This was one of ten hymns chosen out of 500, appearing in Ten New Bible Hymns (1953), and subsequently in many books on both sides of the Atlantic and in WOV. This is such a valuable hymn that it has survived in spite of its archaic and non-inclusive language: it originally began ‘God hath spoken’, and in some books, such as UMH, ‘his prophets’ have become ‘the prophets’, although that book, unlike some others, retains the original ‘hath’. Stanza 2 and the...