O Lord! how happy should we be

O Lord! how happy should we be. Joseph Anstice* (1808-1836). First published in Hymns by the late Joseph Anstice (Bridgwater, 1836), a collection of the hymns which the dying Anstice had dictated to his wife in the weeks before his death. Its five stanzas were printed in Frances Mary Yonge*’s The Child’s Christian Year (Oxford, 1841), for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, with a preceding text from 1 Peter 5:7, ‘Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you’, and a concluding text from Isaiah 26:3, ‘Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee.’ From there the hymn found its way into a number of mainstream hymnbooks, such as the First Edition...