Timothy Dudley-Smith and “Tell Out, My Soul, the Greatness of the Lord” (#168)

What greater theme can there be in our hymnody than the greatness of God?  That is the central truth in this hymn by the British hymn-writer Timothy Dudley-Smith, a retired evangelical bishop of the Church of England.  Author of more than 400 hymns, he was born in 1926 in Manchester.   He studied math and theology at Pembroke College, Cambridge.  After graduating in 1947, he began his ordination trained at Ridley Hall, Cambridge and was then ordained a deacon in 1950 and a priest in 1951.  That theological college was named after Nicholas Ridley, the sixteenth century bishop martyred during the reign of “Bloody Mary,” it is an evangelical training school for Anglican clergy.

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