Lyrics
Spirit of God, descend upon my heart;
Wean it from earth, through all its pulses move;
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as Thou art,
And make me love Thee as I ought to love.
I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies,
No sudden rending of the veil of clay,
No angel visitant, no opening skies;
But take the dimness of my soul away.
Hast Thou not bid us love Thee, God and King?
All, all Thine own, soul, heart and strength and mind.
I see Thy cross; there teach my heart to cling:
O let me seek Thee, and O let me find!
Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh;
Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear,
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh;
Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.
Teach me to love Thee as Thine angels love,
One holy passion filling all my frame;
The baptism of the heaven-descended Dove,
My heart an altar, and Thy love the flame.
Public domain hymn text and tune (text 1854, tune 1870). Words by George Croly; music by Frederick C. Atkinson.
The Story Behind the Hymn
George Croly, an Irish-born Anglican clergyman, poet, and novelist, wrote "Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart" in 1854, originally titling it "Holiness Desired." It appeared that year in Psalms and Hymns for Public Worship, a hymnal Croly compiled himself for the congregation of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, in London, where he had served since 1835 after taking on the difficult task of reviving a church in one of the city's poorest slum districts.
Croly was, by most accounts, an unusually versatile writer — publishing history, biography, and fiction alongside his clerical work and his contributions to Blackwood's Magazine — but of the many hymns collected in his 1854 hymnal, this is the only one that has remained in wide use.
The text is structured as a sustained, personal prayer rather than a hymn of praise or narrative: each of its five verses asks for a different aspect of the Spirit's work — freedom from worldly distraction, freedom from doubt, a deeper love for Christ, patience in prayer, and finally a love matching that of the angels themselves. Notably, the hymn explicitly asks for none of the dramatic, visionary experiences sometimes associated with spiritual encounter — "no dream, no prophet ecstasies… no angel visitant, no opening skies" — asking instead only for the quiet removal of the soul's own dimness.
Croly died suddenly in a London street in 1860, six years after writing his one lasting hymn — a modest, inward-looking prayer that has long outlived both the slum parish he revived and the many other works he wrote alongside it.
