Philip Doddridge Day

break out your badges for

 

PHILIP

DODDRIDGE

DAY

26.6.1702 – 26.10.1751

 

Hymnwriter & Scholar

The youngest of 20 (!) he was laid aside when born as being dead – like Harry Ironside – but fortunately noticed to have some signs of life, and so gained some attention.  His parents died when he was a young boy and poor health plagued him through his life.

He became one of the most influential evangelical independent church leaders of England.  At the age of 27 he began a fruitful 22 year pastorate at Castle Hill Congregational Chapel in Northampton, also directing a theological training school, where he conducted classes in Hebrew, Greek, mathematics and philosophy, as well as theology.  His scholarship was recognised by him being granted a Doctor of Divinity degree from Aberdeen university in 1736.  Perhaps mathematics would make our own pastors a little more logical….

He was a great friend of Isaac Watts and wrote 370 hymns, nearly all of them being summaries to his sermons and founded on verses of Scripture.  They were published four years after his death.

At the age of 47 he developed TB and was sent to Portugal to help prolong his life.  The action was too late however and he died there.  Among his final words were: “My tears are tears of joy.  I can give up my country, my loved ones and friends into the hand of God; and as to myself, I can as well go to Heaven from Lisbon as from my own study in Northampton. I am more afraid of doing wrong than dying.”

His most well known hymn is ‘O Happy Day’ and while many of us can probably not recall precisely the day of our conversion, it not being a sudden or dramatic affair, we can thank God for the beginnings of Grace in us.

Baptist Hymnal 297

O Happy day, that fixed my choice
On Thee, my Saviour and my God!
Well may this glowing heart rejoice,
And tell its raptures all abroad.

O happy bond, that seals my vows,
To Him who merits all my love!
Let cheerful anthems fill His house,
While to that sacred shrine I move.

‘Tis done! the great transaction’s done;
I am my Lord’s, and He is mine;
He drew me, and I followed on,
Charmed to confess the voice divine.

High heaven, that heard the solemn vow,
That vow renewed shall daily hear,
Till in life’s latest hour I bow,
And bless in death a bond so dear.

 

Other hymns in (old) Baptist Hymnal are numbers 54 Grace, ’tis a charming sound, 81 Hark, the glad sound, 197, 515, 550, 593, 715.

Sources:  Kenneth Osbeck, Elsie Houghton, Frank Colquhoun, Don’s Diary.

 

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