“I have fought my way through,
I have finished the work Thou didst give me to do.”
O that each from the Lord may receive the glad word,
“Well and faithfully done,
Enter into my joy, and sit down on my throne.”
For a hundred and fifty years this has been sung in the Methodist watch-meetings, and it will be long before it ceases to be sung—and reprinted in Methodist, and some Baptist hymnals.
The tune of “Lucas,” named after James Lucas, its composer, is the favorite vehicle of song for the “Watch-hymn.” Like the tune to “O How Happy Are They,” it has the movement of the words and the emphasis of their meaning.
No knowledge of James Lucas is at hand except that he lived in England, where one brief reference gives his birth-date as 1762 and “about 1805” as the birth-date of the tune.
“GREAT GOD, WE SING THAT MIGHTY HAND.”
The admirable hymn of Dr. Doddridge may be noted in this division with its equally admirable 560 / 496 tune of “Melancthon,” one of the old Lutheran chorals of Germany.