Lord of the worlds below (The Seasons)

which first appeared in his Collection, from which it passed to a number of later ones. It is an adaptation for congregational use of Thomson’s “Hymn on the Seasons.” See Putnam, Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith.

J. 389 Revised by H.W.F.

Frothingham, Rev. Nathaniel Langdon, D.D., Boston, July 23, 1793—April 4, 1870, Boston. He graduated from Harvard in 1811, and after a brief period of further study and as tutor in the College, he entered the Unitarian ministry and in 1815 was settled as minister of the First Church in Boston, where he served until 1850, when ill-health and approaching blindness caused his resignation. He was one of the most distinguished Boston ministers of his period, and the author of a good deal of verse, published in his Metrical Pieces, Translated and Original, 1855, and in a second volume with the same title in 1870. In 1828 he wrote his finest hymn,

1. O God, whose presence glows in all

for the ordination of his friend, [W. P. Lunt], q.v., as minister of the Second Unitarian Congregational Church, New York, on June 19, of that year.

In 1835 he wrote

2. We meditate the day

for the installation of Mr. Lunt as Co-pastor with Rev. Peter Whitney of the First Church at Quincy, Massachusetts, and in 1839 he wrote

3. O Lord of life and truth and grace,

for the ordination of Henry Whitney Bellows in New York.

His later hymns were

4. O Saviour, whose immortal word,

“Written for the Dedication of the Church of the Saviour, Boston, November 16, 1847.”;

5. Remember me, the Saviour said, (Communion Service)

6. The Lord gave the word,

’Twas the word of his truth.

7. The patriarch’s dove, on weary wing,

8. They passed away from sight, (Death and Burial)

9. When I am weak, I’m strong (Spiritual Strength)

Of these hymns the first two were included in Lunt’s Christian Psalter, 1841; nos. 1, 2, 6 and 7 were included in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ (1853); and all but no. 8 are included in the author’s Metrical Pieces, 1855. No. 5 had considerable use in the 19th century, but no. 1 alone survives in 20th century Unitarian collections.