Looking upwards in a storm

The author of “There is a fountain” – William Cowper – also wrote “Looking upwards in a Storm” (“God of my life, to thee I call”). This hymn is number XIX in Book III of Olney Hymns, hymns under the heading of “Conflict.” At times it appears in hymn books with the heading “Divine Aid Implored.” Oft afflicted with despair, distress, and depression, Cowper (1731-1800) was experientially well-able to speak for the Christian who cries in distress. Remember God is “God of my life,” a prayer-hearing, prayer-answering God, who invites the mourner to his open door! “God, my God, forgets me not.”

The meter of the hymn is Long Meter. The CPWI Hymnal (The Church in the Province of the West Indies, St John, Barbados, 2010) joins it with the tune St. Sepulchre by George Cooper III (1820-1876). Cooper was an organist St. Sepulchre’s Church on Newgate Street in London, and the tune takes its name from the church. Of Sacred Harp tunes, I think that Hebron would be a good fit, and also Devotion.

1. God of my life, to thee I call,
Afflicted at thy feet I fall;
When the great water-floods prevail,
Leave not my trembling heart to fail!

2. Friend of the friendless, and the faint!
Where should I lodge my deep complaint?
Where but with thee, whose open door
Invites the helpless and the poor?

3. Did ever mourner plead with thee,
And thou refuse that mourner’s plea?
Does not the word still fix’d remain,
That none shall seek thy face in vain?

4. That were a grief I could not bear,
Didst thou not hear and answer pray’r;
But a pray’r hearing, answ’ring God,
Supports me under ev’ry load.

5. Fair is the lot that’s cast for me:
I have an advocate with thee;
They whom the world caresses most
Have no such privilege to boast.

6. Poor though I am, despis’d, forgot,
Yet God, my God, forgets me not.
And he is safe, and must succeed,
For whom the Lord vouchsafes to plead.

To the first stanza, Cowper footnotes Psalm lxix. 15, and  Psalm xl. 17 to the sixth.

Psalm 69:15 Let not the waterflood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me.

Psalm 40:17 But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me: thou art my help and my deliverer; make no tarrying, O my God.