My/O God, my heart with love inflame

with SHOUTING SONG

I. Text: Origins

The text of this hymn was claimed by William Colbert, who was a well-known itinerant preacher in the earliest days of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and whose journals, dated 1790 to 1833, are significant for recording much of the early history of that denomination. His journals are also the way by which he claimed ownership of the hymn.[1] Methodist historian John Atkinson said of him:

The Rev. William Colbert was a native of Maryland, and a leader in the field when Methodism here was young. He was an able, laborious, and successful itinerant, and a contemporary of several of the earliest Methodists of Maryland. He was an early colleague and cherished friend of Henry Boehm, one of the traveling companions of Bishop Asbury and the centenarian of the Methodist Episcopal Church. I will remember in my association with the venerable Boehm with what affectionate interest he would recur to his ministerial intercourse with Colbert.[2]

Henry Boehm himself said of Colbert:

William Colbert was a small man. He was a genuine Methodist, a sound divine, and a great revivalist. Hundreds will rise up and call him blessed. He had a heart formed for friendship. He and my friend William Hunter died the same year [1833].[3]

II. Text: Publication

Colbert’s hymn was printed three times in three different cities in 1801. One was in A Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns (1801 | Fig. 1), compiled by Richard Allen (1760–1831), founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who had also started his career as an itinerant Methodist preacher. According to J. Roland Braithwaite, Colbert “was a frequent visitor to Mother Bethel [Allen’s church in Philadelphia] and a friend of Richard Allen.”[4] In Allen’s hymnal, the text was unattributed, given in five stanzas of eight lines, without music.

That same year, this hymn was printed in Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Use of Christians (Baltimore: Barnhill, 1801 | Fig. 2), headed “Shouting God’s Praise,” spanning five stanzas of eight lines, unattributed, without music. Compared to Allen’s edition, this example contains several minor differences, and a more significant change at 2.5–6, where the rhyme uses different words.

The other printing in 1801 was in A New and Beautiful Collection of Select Hymns and Spiritual Songs (Walpole, NH: Thomas & Thomas, 1801 | Fig. 3), edited by Josiah Goddard. This was a newer version of his 1798 collection, which did not contain this hymn. Here, the hymn has its own differences from the other two, most notably the first word, “My,” and the structure of ten stanzas of four lines. It was headed “The Triumph, or shouting hymn.” The hymn is more consistent textually with Allen’s than with the other, which would seem to put the original text somewhere between those two, probably taken from a broadside no longer in existence.

The hymn was printed dozens of times through the 1800s, mostly in text-only collections, but fell out of favor before the turn of the next century. In the very few musical printings available for examination, spanning 1875 to 1887, it was not set consistently to any particular tune.

III. Text: Analysis

The hymn is clearly representative of the revivalist camp-meeting movement in the United States, with its exuberant references to singing and shouting. The overall theme is one of joy in anticipation of the hereafter. The last line of the first stanza echoes Psalm 150:6 (“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord”). The Baltimore edition avoided the repetition of “heav’nly arches” near the beginning and end by altering the last line. The “happy shore” found here and in other hymns referencing heaven is an allusion to the river of life flowing through Revelation 22. Not only did the writer picture life as a journey toward heaven, he also appealed to the ultimate end, involving a resurrection of the dead (1 Thess. 4:16, Isa. 16:19, Mk. 12:24–27). The lines “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” is a quote, almost verbatim, from 1 Corinthians 15:55. The race to win the prize in an allusion to 1 Corinthians 9:24.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
14 January 2021

Footnotes:

1. Journal of the Travels of William Colbert, Methodist Preacher (1790–1798). We have been unable to examine his journals and verify his claim to authorship; this connection was described by J. Roland Braithwaite (1992), p. 78.

2. John Atkinson, History of the Origin of the Wesleyan Movement in America (Jersey City, NJ: Wesleyan Publishing, 1896), p. 35: Archive.org

3. Henry Boehm, Reminiscences, Historical and Biographical, of Sixty-four Years in the Ministry, ed. Joseph B. Wakeley (NY: Carlton & Porter, 1866), p. 185: Archive.org

4. J. Roland Braithwaite, “Originality in the 1801 hymnals of Richard Allen,” New Perspectives on Music: Essays in Honor of Eileen Southern (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park, 1992), p. 78.

Related Links:

“O God, my heart with love inflame,” Hymnary.org: https://hymnary.org/text/o_god_my_heart_with_love_inflame