William Williams Pantycelyn

William Williams Pantycelyn was a Welsh Methodist preacher, poet, prose writer, and hymn writer born near Llandovery, Carmarthenshire, in 1717. He originally prepared for medicine, but hearing Howell Harris preach during the Welsh evangelical awakening redirected his life. Williams was ordained deacon in the Church of England in 1740, but his Methodist activity contributed to the refusal of priestly ordination in 1743. He then gave himself to itinerant preaching and became one of the principal leaders of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism alongside Harris and Daniel Rowland.

Williams produced an extraordinary body of Welsh religious literature and is remembered especially for his hymns. The Welsh source of “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” first appeared securely in his 1762 collection “Caniadau y rhai sydd ar y Môr o Wydr.” The original contained six stanzas and was headed as a prayer for strength through the world’s wilderness.

Modern hymnals often credit Williams with portions of the familiar English text in addition to his unquestioned authorship of the Welsh original. The documentary situation is more complicated: a three-stanza English adaptation appeared anonymously in 1772 and was only later attributed to him. His other English work includes “O’er the Gloomy Hills of Darkness,” while his vast Welsh output helped shape the devotional language of the Methodist revival.