My dear Redeemer and my Lord
My dear Redeemer and my Lord. Isaac Watts* (1674-1748).
From Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1709), Book II, ‘Composed on Divine Subjects’, hymn CXXXIX, with the title, ‘The Example of Christ’. It provides what The Companion to RS (1999) calls ‘a necessary corrective to the idea that “following Christ” is a simple matter of being nice to people’ (p. 258). Nor is it simply a matter of doing our duty. It is Christ’s own life that is to be the Christian’s pattern, in which ‘the law appears’, and in which we can read our duty:
My dear Redeemer, and my Lord,I read my Duty in thy Word,But in thy Life the Law appearsDrawn out in living Characters.
Such was thy Truth, and such thy Zeal,Such Deference to...
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MLA style (see MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, 3rd Ed.)
. "My dear Redeemer and my Lord."
The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Canterbury Press. Web. 17 Jan. 2026.<
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/m/my-dear-redeemer-and-my-lord>.
Chicago style (see The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Ed.)
. "My dear Redeemer and my Lord."
The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Canterbury Press, accessed January 17, 2026,
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/m/my-dear-redeemer-and-my-lord.