Hark, my soul, how everything

Hark, my soul, how everything. John Austin* (1613-1669). From Austin’s Devotions in the Antient Way of Offices (1668), where it is the hymn for Lauds on Monday, with the first line as ‘every Thing’. It found its way, via George Hickes’s Reformed Devotions, into John Wesley*’s first hymn book, the Collection of Psalms and Hymns (Charlestown, 1737), where Wesley altered the metre from 7.7.7.7. to 8.8.8.8., probably for the sake of a tune, thus: Hark, my dull Soul, how every Thing Strives to adore our bounteous King! The hymn was included in George Whitefield*’s Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1753), and it is found in its original form in Roundell Palmer*’s influential anthology The Book of...

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