Blest Are the Pure in Heart

John Keble, from The Christian Year (1827)

The author of our Hymn of the Week, John Keble, was the sort of man it is hard to imagine outside of the nineteenth century, and that is to the credit of his age. His father was an Anglican minister, devout, intelligent, highly cultured, and satisfied with a modest vicarage in Gloucestershire, in the lovely surroundings of the Cotswolds. The elder Keb…