O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing

"O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing" is a Christian hymn written by Charles Wesley. Charles Wesley wrote over 6,000 hymns, many of which were subsequently reprinted, frequently with alterations, in hymnals, particularly those of Methodist churches.

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 May 21 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 the May 24, 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 Böhler's words, 'Had I a thousand tongues I would praise Him with them all'. The hymn was placed first in John Wesley's A Collection of Hymns for the People Called Methodists published in 1780. It appeared in every (Wesleyan) Methodist hymnal from that time until the publication of Hymns and Psalms in 1983.

Today the hymn is often condensed into a smaller number (typically between six and eight) stanzas.

The editors of The United Methodist Hymnal omitted the verse containing the words "dumb" and "lame", but later reverted to the original version.

The original lyrics are:

1. Glory to God, and praise and love,
Be ever, ever given;
By saints below and saints above,
The Church in earth and heaven.

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