I Will Sing!
Composer: Priscilla Murphy (Celebrating Grace)
Text: Charles Wesley (1739), “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” with a refrain by Priscilla Murphy
Season: Sung October 4, 2026, the first anthem of the season, Beverly Heights Sanctuary Choir
Charles Wesley wrote the hymn for the first anniversary of his conversion, May 21, 1739, and gave it eighteen stanzas. The one everyone knows, “O for a thousand tongues to sing,” was the seventh; it rose to the top because it remembers something a Moravian friend, Peter Böhler, had said to him: “Had I a thousand tongues, I would praise him with them all.” What follows in Wesley’s text is a catalogue of what the name of Jesus does: it breaks the power of cancelled sin, it sets the prisoner free, it makes the foulest clean.
Priscilla Murphy keeps Wesley’s stanzas and adds a refrain of her own, “I will sing of my Savior,” which turns the hymn’s wish into a promise. The choir chose it to open the 2026 season, and the last line, “Had I a thousand hearts to give, they would be yours alone,” is a good summary of what a church choir is for.
Scripture: Psalm 35:28; Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18