When my love to Christ grows weak

When my love to Christ grows weak. John Reynell Wreford* (1800-1881). First published in A Collection of Hymns for Public and Private Worship (1837), edited by John Relly Beard*. It was entitled ‘Christ’s Agony and Crucifixion’. When Beard’s book crossed the Atlantic, the Unitarian Samuel Longfellow* rewrote the hymn with the first line as ‘When my love to God grows weak’, publishing it in a supplement (1848) to A Book of Hymns for Public and Private Devotion (Boston, 1846). It was included in the major American Unitarian collection, Hymns of the Spirit (1864), edited by Longfellow and Samuel Johnson*, in an amended form (interesting as an example of Unitarian re-writing, especially in the...