No! not despairingly

No! not despairingly. Horatius Bonar* (1808-1889). First published in Bonar’s Hymns of Faith and Hope, Third Series, 1867, where it was entitled ‘Confession and Peace’. It has five stanzas. It was printed in A Church of England Hymn Book, edited by Godfrey Thring* (1880), and in the Hymnal Companion to the Book of Common Prayer, Third Edition (1890), edited by Edward Henry Bickersteth*. It was set in the Church Hymnary (1898), to a tune by Robert Prescott Stewart*, ST WERBURGH, which has continued to be associated with the hymn. It was omitted from RCH, and (in Scotland at least) never recovered. It is possible that the language was deemed to be too personal and intimate for congregational...