Philip Doddridge
1702–1751 · Baroque
English Congregationalist minister and academy tutor at Northampton, author of about 400 hymns written to follow his sermons.
Life
Philip Doddridge was born in London in 1702, the last of twenty children of an oil merchant. His grandfather had been ejected from his Anglican living in 1662; his mother was the daughter of a Lutheran pastor who had fled Prague for England, and she taught him Bible history from the Dutch tiles on the family fireplace. Declining an offer of education for the Anglican ministry, he trained at a Dissenting academy and became a Congregationalist minister. From 1729 he was pastor at Castle Hill, Northampton, and head of a dissenting academy there that trained many ministers. His The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul (1745) was widely read. Suffering from tuberculosis, he sailed to Lisbon for his health and died there in 1751.
As a Hymn Writer
Doddridge wrote his hymns to be sung after his sermons, each summing up the text he had preached. They were published after his death as Hymns Founded on Various Texts in the Holy Scriptures (1755). They are therefore biblical and practical, often moving from a Scripture image to personal application: 'Hark the Glad Sound!' (Luke 4), 'O God of Bethel' (Genesis 28), and hymns for Advent and the Lord's Supper.
In The Lutheran Hymnal and Lutheran Service Book (6)
- Hark the Glad Sound! The Savior Comes
- Great God, We Sing That Mighty Hand
- The Savior Kindly Calls
- Grace! 'Tis a Charming Sound
- O God of Jacob, by Whose Hand
- And Will the Judge Descend
Sources: Wikipedia, 'Philip Doddridge'.