What shall we offer our good Lord

What shall we offer our good Lord. August Gottlieb Spangenberg* (1704-1792), translated by John Wesley* (1703-1791). Spangenberg’s hymn, beginning ‘Der König ruht, und schauet doch’, was written for the 34th birthday of Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf* on 26 May 1734. It was too late for the Gesang-Buch der Gemeine in Herrnhut of 1735, but was printed in an appendix of 1737. Wesley, who knew Spangenberg in Georgia, translated the hymn, beginning ‘High on His everlasting throne’. He expanded on the German text to make a hymn of thirteen 8-line stanzas (Nuelsen translated, 1972, pp. 159-161), which he published in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742), where it was entitled ‘God’s Husbandry. From the...

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