Sunday's Hymn

I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art

I greet Thee, who my sure Redeemer art,
My only trust and Savior of my heart,
Who pain didst undergo for my poor sake;
I pray Thee from our hearts all cares to take.

Thou art the King of mercy and of grace,
Reigning omnipotent in every place;
So come, O King, and our whole being sway;
Shine on us with the light of Thy pure day.

Thou art the life, by which alone we live,
And all our substance and our strength receive;
Oh comfort us in death’s approaching hour,
Strong-hearted then to face it by Thy power.

Thou hast the true and perfect gentleness,
No harshness hast Thou and no bitterness;
Make us to taste the sweet grace found in Thee
And ever stay in Thy sweet unity.

Our hope is in no other save in Thee;
Our faith is built upon Thy promise free;
Oh grant to us such stronger help and sure,
That we can boldly conquer and endure.

—Strasbourg Psalter, 1545

Listen to an mp3 from Center for Church Music.

Listen to an iTunes podcast on this hymn from First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, MS.

Other hymns, worship songs, sermons etc. posted today:

• Hark the Herald Angels Sing and I Am Praying for You at Wordwise Hymns (Hymn lovers will want to put this blog in their feed reader.)
• Praise to the Lord, the Almighty at threegirldad
• Holy Father, in Thy Mercy at The Happy Wonderer
• By Faith in Christ, I Walk with God at Whatever Is Good
• My Times Are in Thy Hands at Field Stone Cottage
• The Ends of All the Earth Shall Hear at Hiraeth
• All People That On Earth Do Dwell at Conjubilant with Song
• Lord’s Day 34, 2010 at The Thirsty Theologian
• On creeds and those who eschew them (Your Weekly Dose of Spurgeon) at Pyromaniacs

Have you posted a hymn (or sermon, sermon notes, prayer, etc.) today and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by contacting me using the contact form linked above, and I’ll add your post to the list.

Not Bestowing Authority

From 40 Questions about Interpreting the Bible by Robert L. Plummer, a point that’s been made here before, but bears repeating:

For Protestant Christians, the canon is not an authorized collection of writings (in that the church conferred its authority or approval upon a list of books). Rather, the canon is a collection of authoritative writings. The biblical writing have an inherent authority as works uniquely inspired by God. Canonization is the process of recognizing that inherent authority, not bestowing it from an outside source.

Reading Biographies: Spurgeon

I’m reading Arnold Dallimore’s Spurgeon along with Tim Challies and others. This week’s reading included chapters 15-17 of this biography of Charles Spurgeon, with the first chapter dealing with the daily life of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, the second with the 10 peak years of Spurgeon’s minstry, and the last with some of the features of Spurgeon’s personality. I’ve got a busy day, so I’m just going to mention a couple of things that interested me

Chapter 15 dispels any notion that the Metropolitan Tabernacle was just a place for Sunday services. It was a very busy place with things happening there all day and evening every day of the week. It was very much a working church, with an awe-inspiring number of fruitful tasks accomplished in it.

I did have one question: What is a Bible nurse? Mrs. Spurgeon, we’re told, “maintained a Bible nurse at her own expense, and other such nurses also functioned from the Tabernacle.” Can you enlighten me?

Nearly half of the seventeenth chapter titled Personal Characteristics is an explanation of Spurgeon’s drinking and smoking habits. Yes, as you probably already know, Spurgeon smoked cigars and drank beer and ale. That he writes so much on this explains more about Dallimore, I think, than it does about Spurgeon. He concludes his bit on these “bad habits” by saying:

I reported these matters regarding Spurgeon with much reluctance. They seem sadly regrettable in the life of so righteous a man, yet in the name of either Christian honesty or scholarly accuracy they could not be omitted.

Dallimore explains that “these two practices” show us that Spurgeon was “a man of his times.” I’m thinking that these comments may show us that Dallimore was also a man of his times.

Update on Friday, August 20, 2010 at 3:12PM by rebecca

Re: Bible nurses, I found this: The History of Nursing – Major Sources in the Metropolitan London Archives (pdf).

Mrs Ellen Ranyard established the London Bible and Domestic Female Mission in 1857 based at her home in Bloomsbury. Working class “Biblewomen” were employed to visit the poor, advise on domestic matters, and to sell Bibles by instalments. They were supervised by middle class female superintendents who read their reports once a week, paid their salaries and ran the mothers’ meetings held in each district.

In 1868 Mrs Ranyard added a nursing branch to the Mission. The Bible nurses, drawn from the respectable working class, were the first trained district nurses in London. Initially a Bible nurse’s training included only three months at a hospital, but by 1893 it had been extended to one year at a general hospital, attendance at a special hospital, then probationary training in the districts. By 1894 the Mission employed 82 nurses who made 215,000 visits to almost 10,000 patients. After 1907 it ceased to train its own nurses. In 1917 the name of the organisation was changed to the Ranyard Mission and its nurses became Ranyard Nurses.

Putting it together, I’m guessing Bible nurses were like an order of nurses that came out of “Biblewomen.”