Sweet the time, exceeding sweet

Sweet the time, exceeding sweet. George Burder* (1752-1832).  According to JJ, p. 1108, this was first published in the Gospel Magazine, April 1779, in five stanzas, headed ‘An Hymn for Christian Company’, and signed ‘A.R’. In Burder’s A Collection of Hymns, from various authors, intended as a supplement to Dr. Watts’s hymns, and imitation of the psalms (Coventry, 1784), it was indexed as by ‘G. Burder’. It was entitled ‘Another’, one of five hymns on ‘Brotherly love’ in different metres.  With Burder’s first line the hymn was found in Charles Haddon Spurgeon*’s Our Own Hymn Book (1866), Charles Busbridge Snepp*’s  Songs of Grace and Glory (1872), and some other books. But JJ goes on to...