(picture of William P. Merrill)

“RISE UP, O MEN (CHILD) OF GOD”

“Yet a little while, and…He will come, and will not tarry” (Heb. 10:37)

     INTRO.:  A hymn which encourages us to labor for the Lord while we wait for Him to come is “Rise Up, O Men (Child) of God” (#545 in Hymns for Worship Revised).  The text was written by William Pierson Merrill, who was born at Orange, NJ, on Jan. 10, 1867.  The Merrills must have moved to Massachusetts, because at the age of eleven, he became a member of the Belleville Congregational Church at Newburyport, MA.  Two years later, after his family returned to New Jersey, he became a member of the Second Dutch Reformed Church at New Brunswick, NJ.  His first book, Faith Building, was published in 1885, when he was just eighteen.  Educated at Rutgers, from which he received the A…