Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me
Edward Hopper, 1871
Jesus, Savior, pilot me
Over life’s tempestuous sea;
Unknown waves before me roll.
Hiding rock, and treach’rous shoal;
Chart and compass come from Thee;
Jesus, Savior, pilot me.
As a mother stills her child,
Thou canst hush the ocean wild;
Boist’rous waves obey Thy will
When Thou say’st to them, “Be still;”
Wondrous Sov’reign of the sea? …
When at last I near the shore,
And the fearful breakers roar
’Twixt me and the peaceful rest,
Then, while leaning on Thy breast,
May I hear Thee say to me
“Fear not, I will pilot thee.”
What a Friend They Had in Jesus
Available from Polebridge Press
Edward Hopper (1816–88) was born, lived, and worked in New York City for all of his life, save eleven years in Greenville and Sag Harbor (Long Island), New York. He was a graduate of New York University and of the Union Theological Seminary, also of New York. He was for eighteen years the minister of the Presbyterian Church of the Sea and Land in lower Manhattan that had been founded as a mission for mariners, who then were numerous around the southern tip of that borough. The edifice was built in 1819 when Hopper was an infant. The hymn’s first appearance was anonymous entry in the Sailor’s Magazine in the same year as it was written. It was spotted early on by the New York composer, conductor and music store owner John E . Gould, who set the still-anonymous text to music.
read more
One of the more notable – or should I say “noted”? – deaths during this year just now passing was that of polemicist Christopher Hitchens.
read more
…nothing in my upbringing, in my education and in my commitment to economic and social justice can abide the sacrificing of lives of so-called “ordinary people” to keep the now infamous 1% in the chips.
read more
Constituencies of two distinct religious traditions joined in and by their pasts have been engaged this week in observances honoring their shared mythology.
read more
This author discusses his experience with the pursuit of critical questioning of historic religious texts.
read more
