"O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing" is a Christian hymn written by Charles Wesley. The hymn was placed first in John Wesley's A Collection of Hymns for the People Called Methodists published in 1780. It was the first hymn in every (Wesleyan) Methodist hymnal from that time until the publication of Hymns and Psalms in 1983.
Contents
Background
Charles Wesley was suffering a bout of pleurisy in May 1738, while he and his brother were studying under the Moravian scholar Peter Boehler in London. At the time, Wesley was plagued by extreme doubts about his faith. Taken to bed with the sickness, on 21 May Wesley was attended by a group of Christians who offered him testimony and basic care, and he was deeply affected by this. He read from his Bible and found himself deeply affected by the words, and at peace with God. Shortly his strength began to return. He wrote of this experience in his journal, and counted it as a renewal of his faith; when his brother John had a similar experience on 24 May, the two men met and sang a hymn Charles had written in praise of his renewal.
One year from the experience, Wesley was taken with the urge to write another hymn, this one in commemoration of his renewal of faith. This hymn took the form of an 18-stanza poem, beginning with the opening lines "Glory to God, and praise, and love, / Be ever, ever given" and was published in 1740 and entitled "For the anniversary day of one's conversion". The seventh verse, which begins, "O for a thousand tongues to sing", and which now is invariably the first verse of a shorter hymn, recalls Boehler's words, "Had I a thousand tongues I would praise him [God] with them all".
Original text
The original text is as follows:
Current versions
Today the hymn is often condensed into a smaller number of stanzas, typically between six and eight.
The 1989 editors of The United Methodist Hymnal omitted the verse containing the words "dumb" and "lame", but later reverted to the original version.
The authors of Companion to Hymns and Psalms (1988) note that the verse "He breaks the power of cancelled sin" is an apparent tautology, but speculated on Wesley's intention.
Tunes
In the U.S., the hymn is commonly sung to Lowell Mason's 1839 arrangement of the hymn tune "Azmon", written by Carl G. Glaser in 1828. Mason's arrangement was written as a setting for this hymn. In Great Britain, Thomas Jarman's tune "Lyngham" is favoured, especially in larger congregations, although the tunes "Lydia" by Thomas Phillips and "Richmond" by Thomas Haweis are also used. Hymns Ancient and Modern has A. J. Eyre's "Selby" and J. H. Coombes's "Oxford New". In Australia, "Lyngham" is the favoured tune in churches, although "Azmon" and "Lydia" are also widely used. It is also occasionally sung to "Cranbrook".