We love the venerable house
We love the venerable house. Ralph Waldo Emerson* (1803-1882).
This was written by Emerson in 1832 for his successor at Second Unitarian Church, Boston, Chandler Robbins. It appeared in Samuel Longfellow* and Samuel Johnson*’s Hymns of the Spirit (1864), and in James Martineau*’s Hymns of Praise and Prayer (1873). It had seven stanzas, the last of which, beginning ‘On him/her who by the altar stands’, is used principally for an induction of a new minister. It has continued in British Unitarian use through successive editions of Hymns of Worship (1927, 1962, omitting the final stanza), and it is still found in the Unitarian HFF (1991). The 1864 text was as follows:
We love the venerable...
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MLA style (see MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, 3rd Ed.)
. "We love the venerable house."
The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Canterbury Press. Web. 22 Jan. 2026.<
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/w/we-love-the-venerable-house>.
Chicago style (see The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Ed.)
. "We love the venerable house."
The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Canterbury Press, accessed January 22, 2026,
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/w/we-love-the-venerable-house.