Acquaint thee, O mortal

The Christian invitation hymn "Acquaint thee, O mortal" was written by the Scottish poet William Knox. It was composed as a scriptural reflection on heavenly wisdom, drawing its primary theological foundation from the biblical text of Job 22:21 and Job 22:27-28. The piece originally appeared in Knox's collection, The Harp of Zion, published in 1825. Structurally, the original hymn comprised 3 stanzas of 8 lines each.

Knox subsequently reissued the piece on page 162 of his posthumous compilation Poems, published in 1847. A editorial footnote in that edition clarifies that the lines were originally written for a Mr. Pettet.

Transatlantic Variants and Textual Alterations

While the hymn found a permanent home in nineteenth-century collections, its wording was frequently modified by editors across different English-speaking regions:

In Great Britain, liturgical adoption of the hymn remained very narrow. A notable exception appeared in Benjamin Hall Kennedy's Hymnologia Christiana in 1863, where the piece was registered as entry Number 1140. Kennedy softened the opening address, rendering the first line as "Acquaint thee, my child, acquaint thee."

In the United States, the hymn achieved a much higher degree of popularity but underwent severe structural truncation. Editors across nearly every American denomination routinely dropped Knox's entire second stanza. This excised stanza focused on the direct relationship between human petition and divine response, promising that the spiritual desires of the heart would be met with divine favor.

A prominent example of this modified, two-stanza arrangement appeared as entry Number 504 in Charles Seymour Robinson's Songs for the Sanctuary, issued in a second edition in 1872. The text in this collection was altered to begin with the words "Acquaint thyself quickly, O Sinner."

Another distinct textual variant was introduced into the Unitarian tradition by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Samuel Johnson. In their Boston publication Book of Hymns, first issued in 1846 and reprinted for several decades, the opening invocation was adjusted to read "Acquaint thee, O Spirit, acquaint thee with God."