Note: This is a magnificent New England shape-note hymn, composed during the great eighteenth-century pietist movement (that also produced the works of J. S. Bach). The tune (in the "Captain Kidd"-"Wondrous Love" family) is ascribed to Jeremiah Ingalls (1764-1838), one of the great (with William Billings) New England singing-master composers. The author of the text is unknown. The non-diatonic shape-note tradition was carried by music masters to the Southern U.S, where it flourished among black and white congregations; and it is still being kept alive by dedicated practioners both in the South and in its original New England home.