Here is Love, Vast as the Ocean

"Here Is Love, Vast as the Ocean" is a Welsh hymn written by William Rees (1802–1883), one of the greatest hymn writers in the Welsh language. Rees, known by his bardic name "Gwilym Hiraethog," was a Calvinistic Methodist minister, poet, journalist, and social reformer who championed the cause of the poor and oppressed in Victorian Wales. The hymn is most famously associated with the Welsh Revival of 1904–1905, one of the most powerful spiritual awakenings in modern history, when entire communities in Wales were transformed by the Holy Spirit. During the revival, congregations would spontaneously begin singing this hymn, sometimes for hours on end, and it became the unofficial anthem of the movement. The original Welsh text, "Dyma Gariad," has four stanzas, though only the first two are commonly translated into English. The hymn's sweeping imagery — love vast as the ocean, grace flowing like a river — reflects the overwhelming sense of God's love that characterized Welsh evangelical piety. Its association with genuine revival gives it a depth of spiritual history that few modern worship songs can match.