Johann Mentzer wrote this hymn of praise, first printed in 1704 in Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen’s major Pietist collection, the Geist-reiches Gesang-Buch. Its most remarkable footprint in hymn history is a borrowed line. When Charles Wesley sought counsel from the Moravian Peter Böhler on how rightly to praise Christ, Böhler answered, “Had I a thousand tongues, I would praise Him with them all,” and from that thought Wesley drew the opening of his own “Oh, for a Thousand Tongues to Sing.” Mentzer’s point is that after Baptism not even a thousand tongues could return God the thanks He is owed, so the singer longs for nine hundred ninety-nine more voices and then summons all creation, the green forest leaves, the meadow grasses, the fragrant flowers, every creature with breath, to break its silence and praise the Maker, until our song is perfected at last among the angel choirs. The original ran to fifteen stanzas; the Lutheran Service Book keeps five, in a faithful rendering owed largely to the translator Catherine Winkworth.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026