God Hath Spoken By His Prophets

“God Hath Spoken by His Prophets” by George Wallace Briggs (1875-1959) was published in 1953 by the Hymn Society of America, who searched for new hymns to celebrate the printing of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. This hymn was selected as one of ten hymns out of five hundred.

George Wallace Briggs was born in Nottingham, England, on December 15, 1875, and died in Hindhead, Surrey, England, on December 30, 1959. He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he took classes in classical studies; then he became a chaplain in the Royal Navy (1902-1909). He served English parishes as vicar at St. Andrew’s, Norwich (1909-18), rector of Loughborough (1918-27), canon of Leicester (1927-34), and canon of Worcester until his retirement in 1956.

Briggs, a prolific and renowned British hymn writer, was one of the founders of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland. As a religious educator, he contributed to two books, Prayers and Hymns for Use in Schools (1927) and The Daily Service (1936), which significantly influenced British worship practice. One of his prayers was used when Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met for the adoption of the Atlantic Charter on August 10, 1941. Mrs. Briggs remembers her husband: “All his life he was writing hymns...”