Hymns based on Matthew 7

Matthew 7 has given hymn writers words for 3 hymns in this library, by writers including Joseph Medlicott Scriven, Edward Mote and W. Chatterton Dix. Each is listed below with the lines that echo the chapter and the verses they draw on, quoted from the World English Bible, a public-domain modern translation.

The verse these hymns return to most is Matthew 7:13: ““Enter in by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter in by it.”

Hymn writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries knew their Bibles almost by heart, and they wove its phrases into their lines — sometimes as a close paraphrase, as in the metrical psalms, and sometimes as a single image carried into a new setting. Reading the verse beside the line shows what the writer had in mind, and often why a hymn was chosen to be sung alongside a particular reading.