A. T. Russell

In his Psalms and Hymns, 1851, Rev. A. T. Russell includes a group of hymns entitled "The Sufferings of Our Lord." One of them, no. 94, of three stanzas, bears such a striking resemblance to Gerhardt's "O Welt, sich hier dein Leben" that we should be inclined to trace its source to this hymn, though it is signed merely with the author's initials A. T. R. and is offered as original:

Although its second and third lines are taken directly from the Bible, yet stanza 3 as a whole appears to be influenced by the thoughts in Gerhardt's stanzas VIII and III. Line 5 might well be regarded as a condensation of the repeated ideas of confession and in Gerhardt's strophes. (Cf. line 19 "ich und meine Sünden"; line 25 "ich sollte büszen").