All People That on Earth Do Dwell (Evangelical Lutheran Worship 883)
1 All people that on earth do dwell,
sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell;
come ye before him and rejoice.
2 Know that the Lord is God indeed;
without our aid he did us make.
We are his folk, he doth us feed,
and for his sheep he doth us take.
3 Oh, enter then his gates with praise;
approach with joy his courts unto;
praise, laud, and bless his name always,
for it is seemly so to do.
4 For why? The Lord our God is good:
his mercy is forever sure;
his truth at all times firmly stood,
and shall from age to age endure.
5 To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
the God whom heav’n and earth adore,
from us and from the angel host
be praise and glory evermore.
Text: William Kethe; Music: Louis Bourgeois; Public Domain
Devotion
This hymn’s tune, commonly called “Old Hundredth,” perhaps better known to many as simply “The Doxology,” was the first hymn tune I ever knew. My parents raised me in a Norwegian Lutheran church in which Sunday worship always ended with this doxology, and I have been told that I would hum along with the tune before I could talk. But the words, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” which I soon learned, were not this tune’s original lyrics but were first sung to this tune in the late 1600’s. The original English lyrics, a paraphrase of Psalm 100, were first published in 1561. William Kethe, a Scottish priest in the Anglican Church who fled to Geneva from English Queen Mary’s persecution of Protestants, composed the hymn for a French edition of the psalter by Louis Bourgeois, an associate of John Calvin. Almost 500 years later many still consider “Old Hundredth” to be “the hymn of the Reformed tradition.”
Prayer
Providing Lord, you call, equip, and send your laborers into your fields, ripe for harvest, in various and amazing ways; remind us often that your works and ways are praiseworthy in all times and contexts. Amen.