Pre-Nineteenth-Century Readings of the Smitten Rock — a note to Victorian Types

George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Religion —> Typological Interpretation of the Bible]

[Note 9, Chapter Two, in print version]

An anonymous hymn dated 1855, which begins "Lord! may the inward grace abound," provides one of the few examples of a nineteenth-century application of the older reading of the stricken rock:

Type of the Spirit's living flow,
In faith we pour the hallow'd stream;
We sign the cross upon the brow,
The solemn pledge of truth to Him,
Who shed for us His precious Blood
To seal the covenant of God.
Baptized into the Trinity,
Adopted children of Thy grace,
O help us, Lord, to live to Thee.

Roundell Palmer includes this hymn as no. 282 in his Book of Praise (1863)

---

Print version published 1980; web version 1998