God Is My Everlasting King
Psalm 46:1-11: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah. There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah. Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.”
Richard Burnham (1749-1810) was a Strict and Particular Baptist pastor and hymn writer. In 1795, he was appointed the pastor of Grafton Street Chapel, Soho, a position he held until his death in 1810. After Burnham’s death, the church appointed John Stevens as Pastor, and in the year 1871, the church was one of twenty-two congregations which joined the Metropolitan Association of Strict Baptist Churches. All churches belonging to this Association at that time were Hyper-Calvinists and Close(d)-Communionists. John Gadsby wrote of him:
Richard Burnham was born in the year 1749, died Oct. 30th, 1810, aged 62, and was buried in Tottenham Court Chapel, London. He was minister of Grafton Street Chapel, Soho. In the preface to his hymns, he says, "I have labored much, in my spiritual songs, to set forth, though I own it is in a feeble way, the unequalled beauties and transcendent glories of a crucified Immanuel; and have aimed to give, instrumentally, the greatest encouragement to the weakest of the Redeemer's praying family.
Your pastor is willing to own that he is the unworthiest of the unworthy yet unworthy as he is, he humbly trusts, through rich; grace, he has in some measure found that the dear bosom of the atoning Lamb is the abiding home of his immortal soul." He died Oct. 30, 1810.
