Awake, our souls, and bless His name

Philip Doddridge. [Christ the Door.] This hymn, based on the words of St. John 10:9 where Christ declares Himself to be the door of the sheepfold, was written by Philip Doddridge in the mid-eighteenth century. It does not appear in the original manuscript collection known as the "Doddridge Manuscripts." Its first public appearance was in the posthumous edition of Doddridge's Hymns and Spiritual Songs, published by his intimate friend Job Orton in 1755. Orton presented the hymn in four stanzas of four lines each. The text was subsequently reprinted in successive nineteenth-century editions of Doddridge's hymnal works, including the collection edited by John Doddridge Humphreys in 1839. While not as universally adopted as some of Doddridge's major communion or race hymns, it gained moderate acceptance within Anglican and Nonconformist collections. In Dr. Benjamin Hall Kennedy's Hymnologia Christiana (1863, No. 201), the opening line was slightly modified to read "Awake, my soul, and bless His name." The hymn celebrates Christ as the exclusive pathway to spiritual salvation, safety, and green pastures for the soul.