Strengthen for service, Lord, the hands

Strengthen for service, Lord, the hands. Ephrem the Syrian* (ca. 306-373), translated by Charles William Humphreys* (1840-1921) and Percy Dearmer* (1867-1936). This hymn originated in a poem by Ephrem the Syrian, ‘Hayyel Māran ’īdē dafšat’, used as a prayer at Holy Communion in the Liturgy of Malabar of the St Thomas Christians in South India. A prose translation of the prayer, beginning ‘Strengthen, O Lord, the hands which are stretched out to receive the Holy Thing’ was made by John Mason Neale* and published in his and R.F. Littledale*’s Liturgies of S. Mark, S. James, S. Clement, S. Chrysostom, and the Church of Malabar (1859). C.W. Humphreys, a layman who later lived in South America,...