Saviour, sprinkle many nations

Saviour, sprinkle many nations. Arthur Cleveland Coxe* (1818-1896). According to the Historical Edition of A&M (1909), p. 664, Coxe began this hymn in America on Good Friday, 1850, and completed it in 1851 in the grounds of Magdalen College, Oxford. It was published in 1851 in a book of poems, Verses… in Commemoration of the Third Jubilee of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Written in an age when missionary activity was extremely important to the church, its very enthusiasm (‘Saviour, lo, the isles are waiting’, stanza 3) has led to its disappearance from modern books. In its heyday it was as popular as ‘From Greenland’s icy mountains’*, and for the same reason. It was...