Charles Wesley (1707–88) wrote this jubilant, half-autobiographical text in 1739 to mark the first anniversary of his conversion, heading it “For the Anniversary Day of One’s Conversion.” The famous opening line did not open the poem at all: the original ran to eighteen stanzas, and “Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing” stood seventh, while our hymnal moves Wesley’s first stanza, “Glory to God, and Praise, and Love,” to the end. The thousand tongues came from a remark of the Moravian Peter Böhler, who told Wesley, “Had I a thousand tongues, I would praise Him with them all.” The image was in the air in those years: Böhler himself seems to have drawn it from Johann Mentzer’s German hymn “Oh, that I had a thousand voices” (our LSB 811), and George Whitefield wrote much the same in a letter of 1739. First printed in 1740, the hymn later opened the 1780 Methodist collection under Praise and Thanksgiving, and it has stood at the head of Methodist hymnals ever since.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026