Thee will I love, my Strength, my Tower
Thee will I love, my Strength, my Tower. Johannes Scheffler* (1624-1677), translated by John Wesley* (1703-1791).
Scheffler’s hymn, beginning ‘Ich will dich lieben, meine Stärke’, was published in his Heilige Seelen-lust, oder Geistliche Hirten-Lieder (Breslau, 1657). Wesley would have found it in Das Gesang-Buch der Gemeine in Herrnhut (1735), the book brought by the Moravians on the voyage to Georgia. It had eight 6-line stanzas, of which Wesley translated seven, omitting stanza 2 (‘Ich will dich lieben, o mein Leben;/ als meinen allerliebsten Freund’), perhaps because of its language of love, of which he disapproved in sacred texts.
The translation dates from after the ‘conversion’...
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MLA style (see MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, 3rd Ed.)
. "Thee will I love, my Strength, my Tower."
The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Canterbury Press. Web. 14 Feb. 2025.<
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/t/thee-will-i-love,-my-strength,-my-tower>.
Chicago style (see The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Ed.)
. "Thee will I love, my Strength, my Tower."
The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Canterbury Press, accessed February 14, 2025,
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/t/thee-will-i-love,-my-strength,-my-tower.