Spread, O spread, thou mighty Word

Spread, O spread, thou mighty Word. Jonathan Friedrich Bahnmaier* (1774-1841), translated by Catherine Winkworth* (1827-1878). This is a translation of Bahnmaier’s ‘Walte, fürder, nah und fern’, published separately in 1827 and in various books thereafter. In JJ it was described as ‘one of the best and most useful hymns for Foreign Missions’ (p. 106). Winkworth would have found it in Christian Carl Josias Bunsen*’s Versuch eines allgemeinen evangelischen Gesang- und Gebetbuchs (Hamburg, 1833), where it begins ‘Walte, walte, nah und fern’: this would account for the repetition in her first line. Her translation, beginning ‘Spread, oh spread, thou mighty Word’ was published in Lyra Germanica...