God the all-terrible! King, who ordainest

God the all-terrible! King, who ordainest. Henry Fothergill Chorley* (1808-1872). Chorley’s career as a musical journalist put him in touch with John Pike Hullah*, for whom this hymn was written in order to find words for RUSSIAN HYMN or RUSSIAN ANTHEM), the recently composed (1833) National Anthem of Russia. It was published in Hullah’s Part Music (1842), entitled ‘In Time of War’, and later in Edward Henry Bickersteth*’s Psalms and Hymns (n.d., but ca. 1858). Chorley’s hymn begins with a most striking description of God, and each of his four stanzas is a plea for the avenging and wrathful God to take pity on humankind. The first three stanzas end ‘Grant to us peace, O most merciful...