O God Beneath Thy Guiding Hand 1. O God, beneath Thy guiding hand Our exiled fathers crossed the sea; And when they trod the wintry strand, With prayer and psalm they worshipped Thee. 2. Thou heardest, well pleased, the song, the prayer: Thy blessing came; and still its power Shall onward, through all ages, bear The memory of that holy hour. 3. Laws, freedom, truth and faith in God Came with those exiles o’er the waves; And, where their pilgrim feet have trod, The God they trusted guards their graves. 4. And here Thy Name, O God of love, Their children’s children still adore, Till these eternal hills remove, And spring adorns the earth no more. Music: Duke Street, attributed to John Hatton, 1793. Words: Leonard Bacon, 1833. According to Hymnary.org, “Leonard Bacon, D.D., was born in Detroit (where his father was a missionary to the Indians), February 19, 1802, and educated at Yale college and at Andover. In 1825 he was ordained Pastor of the Centre Church, New Haven, and retained that charge until 1866, when he was appointed Professor of Theology in Yale Divinity School.” “O God, Beneath They Guiding Hand is a favorite American Anniversary hymn. It is abbreviated and altered from his hymn, ‘The Sabbath morn is as bright and calm,’ which he wrote for the Bicentenary of New Haven, 1833. In this revised form it was first published and appointed ‘For the twenty-second of December.’”