My God, I thank Thee, who hast made

My God, I thank Thee, who hast made. Adelaide Anne Procter* (1825-1864). First published in Procter’s Legends and Lyrics (First Series, 1858), in six stanzas entitled ‘Thankfulness’, beginning ‘I thank thee, O my God, who made/ The earth so bright’. At some stage the first line was changed to the present form: it appeared thus in the Hymnal Companion to the Book of Common Prayer (1870), edited by E.H. Bickersteth*. It was placed in a section for ‘The Visitation of the Sick’, presumably because of stanza 3: ‘I thank thee more that all our joy/ Is touched with pain’, with its acceptance that ‘earth’s bliss may be our guide/ And not our chain’. It has been frequently shortened. In SofP it had...