Hymn of the week 18

On Sunday we sang what has been described as "one of the best modern hymn texts about the ministry of the Holy Spirit". We used Blaenwern, as suggested in New Christian Hymns. The tune was written by Welsh schoolmaster William P Rowlands (1860-1937) during the revival of 1904-05. It became popular later when Billy Graham used it for What a Friend We Have in Jesus.

The hymn itself is by retired Canadian schoolteacher [Edith] Margaret Clarkson (b 1915). She herself says the hymn was written at the Severn River, Ontario, in 1959. She says "I had been asked by Stacey Woods, then general director of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in Canada and USA, to write a teaching hymn on the Holy Spirit for use in student work. He felt there was a great scarcity of teaching hymns on this subject." It appeared first in Anywhere Songs (1960, copyright IVP) and was quickly picked up by British hymnals. "At the request of the committee working on IVCF's Hymns II" she says "I wrote the extra four lines (last quatrain of stanza 1) in order to adapt the text to an eight-line tune, rather than the four-line tune used earlier. This version appeared in Hymns II, which was published in 1976. In 1984, in an effort to remove all archaisms from the text and make it totally contemporary, I made the final revision ... the only one that will be authorized for publication in the future. All my Inter-Varsity hymns were turned over to Hope Publishing Co. in 1986; Hope now holds the copyrights."

For your gift of God the Spirit,
pow'r to make our lives anew,
pledge of life and hope of glory,
Saviour,we would worship you.
crowning gift of resurrection
sent from your ascended throne,
fullness of the very Godhead,
come to make your life our own.

He, the mighty God, indwells us;
His to strengthen, help, empow'r,
His to overcome the tempter,
ours to call in danger's hour.
in His strength we dare to battle
all the raging hosts of sin,
and by Him alone we conquer
foes without and foes within.

He, himself the living author,
wakes to life the sacred word,
reads with us its holy pages
and reveals our risen Lord.
He it is who works within us,
teaching rebel hearts to pray,
He whose holy intercessions
rise for us both night and day.

Father grant your Holy Spirit
in our hearts may rule today,
grieved not, quenched not, but unhindered,
work in us His Sovereign way.
fill us with your holy fullness,
God the Father, Spirit, Son;
in us through us, then forever,
shall your perfect will be done.

PS I just checked and found that I also chose this hymn back in May. See here. I managed to find five verses on that occasion. This time I missed one of the best verses:

He who at creation’s dawning brooded on the lifeless deep,

still across our nature’s shadows moves to wake our souls from sleep;

moves to stir, to draw, to quicken, thrusts us through with sense of sin;

brings to birth and seals and fills us - saving Advocate within.