Scripture Verse

The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He would send forth laborers into His harvest. Luke 10:2

Introduction

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John M. Neale (1818–1866)
Wikipedia

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Words: John M. Neale, Hymns for the Young, se­cond ser­ies, 1844. These words are from O Lord, We Come Be­fore Thee Now, start­ing with the third stan­za.

Music: Man­ches­ter New Ro­bert Wainw­right, 1774 (🔊 pdf nwc).

If you know where to get a good pic­ture of Wain­wright (head & shoul­ders, at least 200×300 pix­els),

Lyrics

The earth, O Lord, is one wide field
Of all Thy chos­en seed;
The crop pre­pared its fruit to yield;
The la­bor­ers are few in­deed.

We there­fore come before Thee now
With fast­ing, and with pray­er,
Beseeching of Thy love that Thou
Wouldst send more la­bor­ers there.

Not for our land alone we pray,
Though that above the rest;
The realms and is­lands far away,
O let them all be blest.

Endue the bi­shops of Thy flock
With wis­dom and with grace,
Against false doc­trine, like a rock,
To set the heart and face.

To all Thy priests Thy truth re­veal,
And make Thy judg­ments clear;
Make Thou Thy dea­cons full of zeal,
And hum­ble, and sin­cere.

And give their flocks a low­ly mind
To hear and to ob­ey;
That each and all may mer­cy find
At Thine ap­pear­ing day.