Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah

William Williams of Pantycelyn was bound for medicine until, in 1738, he heard the revivalist Howell Harris preaching from a churchyard wall and was converted on the spot. He became the sweet singer of the Welsh Methodist revival — travelling an estimated hundred thousand miles on horseback and writing nearly a thousand hymns, of which this is the crown.

The hymn sings the exodus as every believer's autobiography: a pilgrim through this barren land guided by the bread of heaven (manna), the crystal fountain from the smitten rock, and the fire and cloudy pillar. Weakness is admitted in the first breath — I am weak, but thou art mighty — which is precisely why the guide must be the great Jehovah himself.

The final stanza reaches Jordan — the river Welsh miners, and later rugby crowds, learned to sing about death without flinching: death of death, and hell's destruction, land me safe on Canaan's side. Set to Cwm Rhondda in 1905, it became Wales' unofficial anthem, sung at weddings, funerals, and Cardiff Arms Park with equal conviction: songs of praises I will ever give to thee.