Unsern Ausgang segne Gott

Unsern Ausgang segne Gott. Hartmann Schenck* (1634-1681). This hymn (‘God bless our going out’) is found at EG 163, entitled  ‘Gesänglein, wann der Gottesdienst zu Ende ist’ (‘Short hymn for the end of a service’). It was the last stanza of a three-stanza 6-line hymn, printed in The Lutheran Hymnal (1941) beginning ‘Nun Gott Lob, es ist vollbracht/ Singen, Beten, Lehren, Hören.’ The translation in that book began ‘Now, the hour of worship o’er,/ Teaching, hearing, praying, singing’. There is some doubt about when the hymn was first published (see Polack, 1958, p. 39), but Schenck’s sons, who possessed the manuscript, claimed it as his, and there seems no need to question this. The...