O Jesu Christ, mein schönstes Licht

O Jesu Christ, mein schönstes Licht. Paul Gerhardt* (1607-1676). First published in Johann Crüger* and Christoph Runge*, D.M. Luthers und andere vornehmen geistreichen und gelehrten Männer geistliche Lieder und Psalmen (Berlin, 1653) (the ‘Crüger-Runge Gesangbuch’) in sixteen 8-line stanzas. It was headed ‘Nach Johann Arnds “Paradiesgärtlein”, Goslar 1621, II, 5: “Gebet um die Liebe Christi”’. Johann Arndt* (1555-1621) was a devotional writer whose work had a wide influence on Lutheran piety, and whose writing Gerhardt greatly admired. This hymn is from Class 2, prayer 5 of Arndt’s Paradiesgärtlein aller christlicher Tugenden (Leipzig, 1612). It gave Philipp Friedrich Hiller* the idea of...

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