Introduction

Words: Phi­lip Dodd­ridge (1702–1751). Pub­lished post­hu­mous­ly in Hymns Found­ed on Va­ri­ous Texts in the Ho­ly Scrip­tures, by Job Or­ton (Shrop­shire, Eng­land: Jo­shua Ed­dowes & John Cot­ton, 1755), num­ber 118: The glo­ry of the Church in the lat­ter day.

Music: Dar­wall’s 148th John Dar­wall, in The New Un­i­ver­sal Psal­mo­dist, by Aar­on Will­iams, 1770 (🔊 pdf nwc).

If you know where to get a good pic­ture of Dar­wall (head-and-shoul­ders, at least 200×300 pix­els), would you ?

Once, when I was on the sea, ex­act­ly at noon I saw a com­mon sail­or ap­proach­ing the cap­tain, who was on the bridge as us­u­al at that time. I watched him as he came up, touched his Scotch cap in sal­u­ta­tion, and said with gruff res­pect­ful­ness, Eight bells, sir!

He meant by the an­nounce­ment to re­port that he knew by the stars that it was just noon—that is, in sail­or par­lance, eight bells by the clock.

The cap­tain with equal gruff­ness re­plied, Make it eight bells! It struck me ra­ther as an odd as­sump­tion for that cap­tain or for that sail­or to make it noon. It was noon any­way, no ma­tter what they did or what they thought about it.

But I kept my eye on the sea­man; he went up to the ship’s bell a hun­dred feet away, and struck it with the clap­per eight times, so that the sound went through all the ship from en­gine-room to top­mast.

The thing was new to me; I thought in­stant­ly of God’s glo­ry—his in­her­ent glo­ry and his de­cla­ra­tive glo­ry. He says to ev­ery man, Glo­ri­fy me! That means, Make me glo­ri­ous! But he is glo­ri­ous in de­spite of men. We can nei­ther add to nor take from his glo­ry. Then say so.

That old sail­or could not make it noon; it was noon. But he could make it noon in the ship; he could go and strike the eight bells, and then ev­en the cook would know it and own it and live as if he felt it was noon overhead and all around him.

Men can­not touch God’s in­her­ent glo­ry; they can pro­claim his de­cla­ra­tive glo­ry, how­ev­er. Zi­on can­not make rays di­vine stream abroad; but Zi­on can tune her voice, and raise her hands on high, tell all the earth her joys, and boast sal­va­tion nigh.

Robinson, p. 38