Hark the Glad Sound, the Savior Comes
Lyrics by Philp Doddridge
Hark! Pay attention! The Savior comes. Prepare your heart for him to be enthroned there. And every voice sings a song; even if it's off key. If you stand near one of my favorite priests, you know for sure that God loves a joyful singer no matter how he sounds.
Philip Doddridge, the composer of this hymn, was a contemporary of Charles Wesley. I don’t know if Doddridge was influenced by Wesley, but I always loved that Charles Wesley wrote words for his hymns to the tunes that they sang in the taverns. Energetic enthusiastic singing underpinned Wesley’s writing. Doddridge used hymns to summarize his sermons which were written ‘to lift his hearers to a spiritual and devotional frame of mind’. I feel Doddridge’s lyrics to this hymn could have had a tavern tune. We should all sing with hearty zest and joy that The Savior comes!
The middle verses remind me of the hopes and promises of the Hebrew prophets … prisoners released and prison gates are burst, … broken hearts are bound and cured with his grace … and lest we forget, he always favored the poor. Salvation was the reason for his birth, the treasures of his grace.
Our glad hosannas, foretell Holy Week, the reason for his birth, the treasures of his grace.
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Traditional
Praise/Worship
