All creation groans and travails
“All creation groans and travails…”
Is the reason Adair first goes to America because Europe, England and Ireland’s Great Cattle Plague was a Threat to his Way of Life? A clue: that year, this hymn was widely sung in English churches:
1. All creation groans and travails
Thou, O God, shall hear its groan
For of man and all creation
Thou alike art Lord alone.
2. Pity then Thy guiltless creatures
Who, not less, man’s sufferings share
For our sins it is they perish
Let them profit by our prayer.
3. Cast Thine eyes of love and mercy
On the misery of the land
Say to the Destroying Angel
‘Tis enough; stay now thine hand.’
4. In our homesteads, in our valleys
Through our pasture lands give peace
Through the Goshen of Thine Israel
Bid the grievous murrain1 cease. \
5. Hear and grant the supplications
Like a cloud of incense, sent
Up towards Thy seat of Mercy
Through the forty days of Lent
6 And at last to all Thy servants
When earth’s troubles shall be o’er
Give, O Triune God, a portion
With Thyself for evermore.
1: Footnote content goes here * murrain = disease \
All Creation Groans and Travails (1866)
Church Hymn
By J.S. Neale (1818-1886)
