History of Hymns: "I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord," by Timothy Dwight
BY BETH SPAULDING
The hymn, “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord,” was written by Timothy Dwight (1752-1817). This hymn has also recently been printed in some hymnals with the title “I Love Thy Church, O God.”
Dwight is perhaps best known for his grandfather, Jonathan Edwards, but he had fame in his own right. Graduating from Yale University at seventeen, Dwight became a tutor at his alma mater in 1769. He served as a chaplain under George Washington during the Revolutionary War and wrote songs and sermons for the men in his regiment. When Dwight returned from military service in 1778, he became a successful farmer, a Congregational minister at Greenfield, Connecticut, a state legislator, and a member of the faculty at Yale, where he was named president in 1795. He not only raised academic standards but also began a spiritual revival, which spread to other institutions in New England.
Dwight also was one of the first American hymn writers. He wrote 33 hymns, with the one for this week perhaps being his best known. It was published in 1800 at the beginning of the Second Great Awakening as part of an edition of Watts’ Psalms, which he edited at the request of the Congregational General Association of Connecticut. Dwight’s edition was arranged to reflect the characteristic theological persuasion of American evangelical Calvinists like his own Congregationalist denomination and their Presbyterian allies. Dwight’s version was no longer simply the Christianized rendering of the Hebrew psalter that Watts had originally conceived nearly a century earlier. This new edition had become instead an instrument of evangelism designed to persuade the unregenerate and to comfort the converted.
One of the aspects of religious culture addressed in evangelical hymnody is that of institutional order, embodied in hymns of the church. For evangelicals, “the gathered church” was the institutional corollary to the necessity of the New Birth. Only those individuals saved by grace and spiritually reborn were eligible to enter the covenanted community of believers. Such local communities of believers came to be identified in theological terms with the kingdom of God on earth. Dwight gave classic expression to this evangelical ideal of the gathered church as the divine community in the hymn, “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord.”
by Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817
1. I love Thy kingdom, Lord,
The house of Thine abode,
The Church our blest Redeemer saved
With His own precious blood.
2. I love Thy Church, O God,
Her walls before Thee stand,
Dear as the apple of Thine eye
And graven on Thy hand.
3. Should I with scoffers join
Her altars to abuse?
No! Better far my tongue were dumb,
My hand its skill should lose.
4. For her my tears shall fall,
For her my prayers ascend,
To her my cares and toils be given
Till toils and cares shall end.
5. Beyond my highest joy
I prize her heavenly ways
Her sweet communion, solemn vows,
Her hymns of love and praise.
6. Jesus, Thou Friend Divine,
Our Savior and our King,
Thy hand from every snare and foe
Shall great deliverance bring.
7. Sure as Thy truth shall last,
To Zion shall be given
The brightest glories earth can yield
And brighter bliss of heaven.
Hymn #462
The Lutheran Hymnal
Text: Psalm 137
Author: Timothy Dwight, 1800, ab., alt.
Composer: Aaron Williams, 1770
Tune: "St. Thomas"
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| Timothy Dwight was the eighth president of Yale. |
