486 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED
Hymn 967. Eternal Father! strong to save. WILLIAM WHITING.
Dated 1860. A revised form appeared in Hymns Ancient and Modern, 1861, for which the hymn was written.
Mr. Whiting was born at Kensington in 1825 ; educated at Clapham ; Master of Winchester College Choristers School. He died at Winchester on May 3, 1878, and was buried in the cemetery there. A friend says he never enjoyed very good health, but was invariably cheerful and possessed a fund of quiet humour. He was rather short in stature and wore spectacles. He published Rural Thoughts and other Poems, 1851, and Edgar Thorpe; or, The Warfare of Life, 1867. Mr. Whiting wrote twelve other hymns, but they have not had wide acceptance. This hymn is familiar to British sailors all over the world. A translation appears in Nouveau Li-vre Cantique, the hymnal in use on the French men-of-war, with the refrain
Vois nos pleurs, entends nos sanglots, Pour ceux en peril sur les flots.
Hymn 968. Lord of the wide, extensive main. CHARLES WESLEY (i).
Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1740; Works, i. 229. A hymn to be sung at sea. Ten verses. Ver. I reads, wide-extended, wind and seas.
There is a fine ring about the last verse
We boast of our recover d powers, Lords are we of the lands and floods ;
And earth, and heaven, and all is ours, And we are Christ s, and Christ is God s.
Several hymns in this volume seem to have been suggested by George Whitefield s voyage to America in 1739. They are worthy of the poet who got his first great lesson in faith from the calm courage of the Moravians on board the Simmonds. When he landed at Deal in 1736, after a stormy voyage, he says, I knelt down and blessed the Hand that had conducted me through such inextricable mazes.
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