Spirit divine, attend our prayers

Spirit divine, attend our prayers. Andrew Reed* (1787-1862). Reed spent his life as a Congregational Church minister in the East End of London, and this hymn was written to be sung there. It was published anonymously in the Evangelical Magazine (June 1829) with the heading: ‘Hymn to the Spirit. Sung on the late Day appointed for Solemn Prayer and Humiliation in the Eastern District of the Metropolis’. The ‘late day’ was Good Friday, 17 April 1829, a day set aside by the London Board of Congregational Ministers to promote ‘a revival of religion in the British Churches’. The hymn was published in Reed’s own The Hymn Book of 1842. It had seven stanzas. The occasion for which the hymn was...