This song came alive in my spirit this morning. Thank God for His love towards me and my family and keeping us together as a nation, I praise Him with this song now and always. Revive us again O Lord.
Dr. W. P. Mackay, author of the book “Grace and Truth”’ was used of God to bring many souls to Christ and was also the author of a number of hymns. His best known being “We praise Thee O God. ” It is believed that it was during one of his earlier evangelistic missions, when, with a heart overflowing with love and thankfulness to God that he gave utterance to these words:
“We praise Thee, O God,
For the Son of Thy love,
For Jesus who died,
And is now gone above.
Later he adopted these words as the first verse of this popular hymn of praise.
William Paton Mackay was born at Montrose on May 13, 1839. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh with the intention of entering the medical profession but he was converted and as a result, his thoughts and desires began to sway in another direction.
One day he heard the Scottish evangelist, Duncan Matheson preach to a crowd at a fair some miles away and young Mackay decided to go and join him preach the Gospel. While he attended college, Mackay dedicated the greater part of his time the sharing the good news of salvation and thus began his work for God. When Mackay turned thirty, he gave up practicing medicine just at the time when he had received his M. D. diploma, and accepted an invitation to pastor a Presbyterian Church at Hull, where he continued until he died on August 22, 1885.
Dr. Mackay revealed remarkable energy and capacity for work due to his godly character and singleness of heart for God. He is said to have traveled over 6, 000 miles by train during the first months of 1875, preaching the Gospel in various parts of the British Isles, often returning home about midnight so he might be back to his flock on the Lord’s Day.
In 1873-74 Moody and Sankey visited Scotland for the first time and Mackay joined them in the great mission, this being the kind of work he delighted in. He was much sought after for being such a great expositor of the Scriptures: “men eminent in Christian work—Mr. D. L. Moody with others—have acknowledged their obligations to Dr. Mackay as a teacher of the English Bible, and have preached the Word with greater fullness and certainty for having been closeted with him over the pages which present it to people’s view. ”
For almost the entire time he pastored Hull Church, he took no fixed income looking alone to the Lord to supply his needs; and they were abundantly supplied through an offering box placed in the lobby of the church. Mackay had a spirit of self-denial guided by the desire that his congregation might be better able to devote more fully to the Lord’s work in other spheres of labor.
One of his biographers writes:
“His style of exposition and address was unique, and his matter bristled with illustrations and anecdote, drawn from his long and varied experience and capacious memory. He was often abrupt, sometimes startling his hearers by the oddity of his expressions and frequently humorous. His fervid, rugged eloquence at all times compelled the attention of his audience, whether he was speaking from the platform or the pulpit, and his congregation never left without having learned some fresh truth or gained further insight into an old one. ”
Dr. Mackay wrote a number of hymns but only a few achieved literary merit; yet God has used these songs of praise in their own particular sphere. Of his compositions, seventeen are found in William Reid’s “Praise Book, ”published in 1872. Two other hymns are equally familiar—
“Worthy, Worthy is the Lamb, ” and:
The Lord is risen: now death’s dark judgment flood is passed in Him who bought us by His blood.
He is also the author of the Gospel hymn:
“Look unto Me, and be ye saved ! ”
Look, men of nations all;
Look, rich and poor; look, old and young;
Look, sinners, great and small.
During the time he was on a holiday at Portree, Dr. Mackay was in a serious accident as he was going on board a ship which was to take him back to Oban. He was carried ashore and given immediate medical assistance but died the next day. His last words were, “For Thine own glory. ” He was forty-seven.