"DESCEND...."

 

Acts 2:3 describes the coming
of the Holy Spirit on the disciples
as "tongues like of fire."

A monthly feature on a hymn of the faith.

Our secular world happily embraces Christmas and Easter as times for decorated trees and gifts, eggs and chocolates in a basket, and family, work and community parties and feasts. At church, add in nativity or passion plays and special hymns. But after Easter, a significant spiritual milestone—the coming of the Holy Spirit--seems to slip by quietly. We know it as Pentecost, coming fifty days after Easter (this year on May 19) and marking when Christ returned to Heaven and the Holy Spirit came upon the waiting, praying disciples.

 But....there is a hymn for it. A brilliant 19^th century writer and minister named George Croly filled that gap with his hymn known as “Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart.” Its music was written by an Anglican choirmaster and organist, Frederick Atkinson.

 Born in 1780, and son of a doctor, Croly was ordained after his education at Trinity College in Dublin, At about age 30 he moved to London where he gained a reputation as a writer and literary critic, writing for journals and penning books on secular and religious topics. His poetry and prose were described as “vigorous and eloquent.” Of his half-dozen hymns, “Spirit of God, Descend upon my Heart” would become his best known, found in more than 300 hymnals. Many can recite its opening verse:

Spirit of God, descend upon my heart;

Wean it from earth, through all its pulses move.

Stoop to my weakness, mighty as thou art,

And make me love Thee as I ought to love.

 He had one unforeseen problem in gaining an Anglican appointment. A Roman Catholic man had the same name. Eventually, a distant relative of his wife (a “Lord Brougham”) helped clear his reputation as Anglican, and Croly was assigned in 1835 to revive a struggling church in the slums of London, St. Stephen Walbrook. Under his dramatic, mostly extemporaneous preaching, the almost-deserted church began to grow, with many commuting (in those horse-and-buggy days) from outside the neighborhood  to hear him.

 Croly had married a woman who contributed to a literary magazine he worked for. They would have five sons and a daughter. But one son died at 23 in a battle in India. His wife would die when he was 71, and his nine-year-old daughter just a few months later. Four sons would survive.

 In 1860, at age 80, he was still ministering at St. Stephen's when one November day he went on a walk, collapsed and died. He was buried at St. Stephens. The classic church building still is used: History - St Stephen Walbrook London

 Here is one internet video of Croly's “Spirit of God,” with printed words and choral background:

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