O for a heart to praise my God

O for a(n) heart to praise my God. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788). As ‘O for an Heart’, this was first published in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742) in eight 4-line stanzas, based on Psalm 51:10, ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.’ John Wesley* sensibly removed the ‘n’ in A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists (1780), and the hymn has thus appeared in all subsequent Methodist hymn-books; though since the Wesleyan Methodist Hymn Book (1904) only stanzas 1-4 and 8 of the original have been retained. Usually in this abbreviated form, the hymn has commended itself to the editors of many other hymnals, including Anglican, Free Church and...

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