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Again the Lord of life and light. Anna Letitia Barbauld* (1743-1825).
First published in her friend William Enfield*'s Hymns for Public Worship: selected from various authors, and intended as a supplement to Dr Watts's Psalms (Warrington, 1772), where it was entitled 'For Easter-Sunday'. It appeared in Barbauld's Poems (1773), as 'Hymn III', with the same title. It had eleven stanzas.
Many different selections from the eleven stanzas have been made, beginning with William Bengo...
All beautiful the march of days. Frances Whitmarsh Wile* (1878-1939).
According to Henry Wilder Foote, American Unitarian Hymn Writers and Hymns (Cambridge, Mass., 1959) (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/53833/53833-h/53833-h.htm), this was written ca. 1907 in Rochester with the help of her pastor, William Channing Gannett*. It had three stanzas:
All beautiful the march of days, As seasons come and go; The hand that shaped the rose hath wrought The crystal of the snow; Hath sent the hoary...
BARBAULD, Anna Letitia (née Aikin). b. Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, 20 June 1743; d. Stoke Newington, London, 9 March 1825. At Kibworth her father was a Presbyterian minister teaching at the dissenting academy (her maternal grandfather, John Jennings, had taught Philip Doddridge* there). In 1753 her father moved to the celebrated Warrington Academy, where she thrived in the cultural and intellectual freedom and began to write, publishing (with her brother John) Poems (1773) and...
Awake, my soul! lift up thine eyes. Anna Letitia Barbauld* (1743-1825).
First published in her friend William Enfield*'s Hymns for Public Worship: selected from various authors, and intended as a supplement to Dr Watts's Psalms (Warrington, 1772), entitled 'The Conflict'. It had six stanzas:
Awake, my soul, lift up thine eyes; See where thy foes against thee rise, In long array, a numerous host; Awake my soul, or thou art lost.
Here giant danger threat'ning stands Mustering his pale terrific...
Blest is the man whose softening heart. Anna Letitia Barbauld* (1743-1825).
This text is taken from a hymn beginning 'Behold, where breathing love divine', first published in her friend William Enfield*'s Hymns for Public Worship: selected from various authors, and intended as a supplement to Dr Watts's Psalms (Warrington, 1772), where it was entitled 'Christian Charity'. It had eight stanzas. The present hymn starts at stanza 3. It was published in Barbauld's Poems (1773) as 'Hymn IV'.
The...
Come, let us join with faithful souls. William George Tarrant* (1853-1928).
Written in 1915, and published in the Congregational Hymnary (1916). It was one of four hymns by Tarrant in the revised Fellowship Hymn Book (1933). It remained in use in Unitarian churches (Hymns of Worship, 1927, Hymns of Worship Revised , 1962) and it remains in HFF (1991), though not in HFL (which prints only two hymns by Tarrant). It had six stanzas:
Come, let us join with faithful souls Our song of faith to...
Come, though we can truly sing. John Murray* (ca. 1740-1815).
This is one of five hymns by Murray, all first published in the 1782 edition of Christian Hymns, Poems and Sacred Songs, Sacred to the Praise of God, Our Saviour, compiled by the English Universalist James Relly and his brother John Relly. The book was first published in London in 1754, and the 1782 edition was published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for Noah Parker (1734-1787), a convert of Murray's and preacher in Portsmouth...
SEARS, Edmund Hamilton. b. Sandisfield, Massachusetts, 6 April 1810; d. Weston, Mass., 16 January 1876. Sears was educated at Union College in Schenectady, New York (1834), and Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge (MA 1837). He was ordained as a Unitarian minister in 1839, but believed in the divinity of Christ, and had an interest in Swedenborgianism. He served churches in Wayland, Lancaster, and Weston, all in Massachusetts.
Among his many very successful books were Regeneration (1854, Ninth...
CHAPIN, Edwin Hubbell. b. Union Village, New York, 29 December 1814; d. Pigeon Cove, Massachusetts, 26 December 1880. Chapin was a Universalist minister, author, orator, social reformer, and writer of hymns. With John Greenleaf Adams (1810-1897) he compiled Hymns for Christian Devotion.
Edwin Chapin was a descendant of Samuel Chapin (1598-1675), born in Devon, England, who became a prominent settler at Springfield, Massachusetts. Among other descendants of Samuel Chapin were hymn tune...
CARPENTER, (Joseph) Estlin. b. Ripley, Surrey, 5 October 1844; d. Oxford, 2 June 1927. He was born into a distinguished Unitarian family: his grandfather, Lant Carpenter, was a noted Unitarian minister and schoolmaster, who taught James Martineau*, who in turn taught Estlin ('Joseph' was usually dropped). The family moved to Hampstead, north London, and Estlin was educated at University College School, London, and the University of London, where he read mental and moral philosophy. He trained...
Father, behold us here. John Murray* (ca. 1740-1815).
This is the third of five hymns, all first published in the 1782 edition of Christian Hymns, Poems and Sacred Songs, Sacred to the Praise of God, Our Saviour, compiled by English Universalist James Relly and his brother John Relly. The book was first published in London in 1754, and the 1782 edition was published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for Noah Parker (1734-1787), a convert of Murray's and preacher in Portsmouth (Brewster, pp....
WILE, Frances Whitmarsh. b. Bristol Centre, New York, 2 December 1878; d. Rochester, New York, 31 July 1939 (places and dates from Henry Wilder Foote, American Unitarian Hymn Writers and Hymns, compiled for the Hymn Society of America, Cambridge, Mass., 1959), http://www.gutenberg.org/files/53833/53833-h/53833-h.htm). She was an active member of the First Unitarian Church in Rochester, of which William Channing Gannett* was the pastor from 1889 to 1908. According to Ronander and Porter (1966,...
HEDGE, Frederic Henry. b. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 12 December 1805; d. 21 August 1890. He was the son of Levi Hedge, Professor of German at Harvard, and his wife Mary Kneeland. Frederic, their only child, was sent to Germany at the age of thirteen to be educated, in the company of George Bancroft (1800-1891, later to become a distinguished statesman and diplomat). He was a pupil at the Gymnasium of Ilfeld (Hannover) and of Schulpforta (Saxony). Returning to the USA in 1823 he entered at...
HOSMER, Frederick Lucian. b. Framingham, Massachusetts, 16 October 1840; d. Berkeley, California, 7 June 1929. Following graduation from Harvard (BA, 1862) he served for two years as headmaster of Houghton School, Bolton, Mass. He attended Harvard Divinity School (BD 1869), and in the same year he was ordained into the Unitarian ministry. He served the First Congregational Church at Northboro, Massachusetts (1870-72), and the Second Congregational Church, Quincy, Illinois (1872-77); and other...
Gracious Power, the world pervading. William Johnson Fox* (1786-1864).
First published in Fox's Hymns and Anthems (1841), in six 3-line stanzas. It is a characteristic Unitarian hymn, addressing God as the 'Gracious Power' that gives wisdom, light and love, 'and the soul of thought and feeling'. Stanza 2 is normally omitted in modern books: it rejects 'formal adorations' and a penitential attitude, in favour of the human spirit at its finest:
Not in formal adorations, Nor with servile...
Hail to the Sabbath day. Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch* (1809-1870).
Published in Bulfinch's first book, Contemplations of the Saviour: a series of extracts from the Gospel history, with reflections and original and selected hymns (Boston, 1832), and then in his Poems (Charleston, 1834) and in Lays of the Gospel (Boston, 1845). Contemplations is a series of expositions of biblical passages, divided into eight parts. The present hymn comes from Part III, 'To the Commencement of Jesus' Public...
Hark, 'tis the Saviour of Mankind. John Murray* (ca. 1840-1815).
This is the last of five hymns, all first published in the 1782 edition of Christian Hymns, Poems and Sacred Sons, Sacred to the Praise of God, Our Saviour, compiled by English Universalist James Relly and his brother John Relly. The book was first published in London in 1754, and the 1782 edition was published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for Noah Parker (1734-1787), a convert of Murray's and preacher in Portsmouth (Brewster,...
Hath not thy heart within thee burned. Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch* (1809-1870).
From Bulfinch's Contemplations of the Saviour: a series of extracts from the Gospel history, with reflections and original and selected hymns (Boston, 1832). For the structure and arrangement of this book, see the entry on 'Hail to the Sabbath day'*. This hymn comes from Part VIII, 'To the Ascension of Jesus': section xlviii (the sections are numbered independently) is entitled 'Jesus appears to his disciples'. It...
WARE, Henry, Jr. b. Hingham, Massachusetts, 21 April 1794; d. Framingham, Massachusetts, 25 September 1843. Ware, a teacher, influential Unitarian minister, writer, and author of hymns (see Unitarian-Universalist hymnody, USA*), was born of the marriage of Henry Ware (1757-1845) and Mary Clarke Ware (1752-1805). His father was a Minister of First Parish (originally Puritan, then Unitarian-Universalist), Hingham, Massachusetts, 1787-1805, and Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard College,...
FOOTE, Henry Wilder (II). b. Boston, Massachusetts, 2 February 1875; d. Southwest Harbor, Maine, 27 August 1964. Highly respected author, scholar, and hymnologist, Foote was a Unitarian minister, teacher, and progressive figure whose ministry highlighted music, poetry, and art. Born to Frances Anne Eliot (1838-1896) and Henry Wilder Foote (1838-1889), the younger Foote had strong connections with Unitarianism and Harvard University. His grandfather, Samuel Atkins Eliot (1798-1862) was mayor of...
BALLOU, Hosea. b. Richmond, New Hampshire, 30 April 1771; d. Boston, Massachusetts, 6 June 1852. The eleventh child of Maturin (1720-1804) a Calvinist Baptist preacher, and Lydia (née) Harris Ballou (1728-73), Hosea converted to Universalism in 1789. He spent several years as an itinerant preacher before taking his first congregation in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1809. He subsequently received a call to serve the Second Universalist Society of Boston in 1815. Hosea Ballou made a notable...
Hymns of the Spirit (1864). This was the title of a major anthology edited by the Unitarian ministers Samuel Longfellow* and Samuel Johnson*, published at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1864. It contained 717 hymns, arranged in two principal sections: 1. Worship; 2. God and His Manifestations.
The first was divided into:
Usual Public Worship
Special Occasions.
The second was divided as follows:
God in Himself;
God in Nature;
God in the Soul;
God in the Life;
God in Humanity.
The...
I heard the bells on Christmas Day. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow* (1807-1882).
A version of this hymn, 'Christmas Bells', was written in 1863 during the Civil War, as a response to the news that his son, Charles Appleton Longfellow, had been wounded fighting for the Union side (Longfellow himself was a strong supporter of abolition). It was published in February 1865 in Our Young Folks, a magazine for young people published by Ticknor and Fields in Boston, and then in Longfellow's Flower-de-Luce...
MARTINEAU, James. b. Norwich, 21 April 1805; d. London, 11 Jan 1900. He was born into a Unitarian family of Huguenot descent, and educated at Norwich Grammar School and at the school at Bristol run by the distinguished Unitarian Dr Lant Carpenter. He became an engineering apprentice at Derby, but decided to become a Unitarian minister and entered Manchester College, then at York, in 1822. In 1828 he became minister of Eustace Street Presbyterian Meeting House, Dublin, and in 1832 moved to...
STOREY, John Andrew. b. Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, 24 March 1935; d. Yeovil, Somerset, 5 December 1997. He was born into a Congregationalist family. Instead of two years of National Service, he engaged for three years in order to become a medical orderly in the Royal Air Force. He then trained for the Congregational ministry at the Western College, Bristol (1956-61), where he became interested in the study of comparative religion.
Storey became minister of a group of Congregational churches...
BOWRING, (Sir) John. b. Exeter, Devon, 17 October 1792; d. Exeter, 23 November 1872. He was educated at school in Exeter at an evening school run by the Unitarian divine, Dr Lant Carpenter. On leaving school he entered a business engaged in foreign trade, where he met many travellers and laid the foundations of his truly extraordinary linguistic acquisition, learning French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Dutch. He later became proficient in Swedish, Russian, Danish, Serbian, Polish...
HOLMES, John Haynes. b. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 29 November 1879; d. New York City, 3 April 1964. Pastor, hymn writer and social activist, Holmes attended Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts (BA 1901) and Harvard Divinity School, (STB 1904). Following ordination by the American Unitarian Association, he served as minister to the Third Religious Society of Dorchester, Mass. (1904-1907), and then accepted the pastorate at the Unitarian Church of the Messiah, New York City (after 1919...
MURRAY, John. b. Alton, Hampshire, England, date unknown; d. Boston, Massachusetts, 3 September 1815. Murray is regarded as the founder of the Universalist denomination in America (see Unitarian-Universalist hymnody, USA*). He contributed five hymn texts to James Relly and John Relly's Christian Hymns, Poems, and Sacred Songs: Sacred to the Praise of God Our Saviour (Portsmouth, Massachusetts, 1782). His wife, Judith Murray*, became an important American literary figure and Universalist...
HOPPS, John Page. b. London, 6 November 1834; d. Shepperton, Middlesex, 6 April 1911. He was educated at Leicester General Baptist College, where he trained for the Baptist ministry. After serving as minister at Hugglescote and Ibstock (1856) and at Birmingham (1857-), he became a Unitarian in 1860 and went on to serve as a Unitarian minister in Sheffield, Dukinfield, Glasgow, Leicester and London. Hopps published many books, pamphlets and sermons, many of which proved controversial: he...
BEARD, John Relly. b. Portsmouth, 4 August 1800; d. Ashton upon Mersey, 22 November 1876. He was educated at Portsmouth and in France (paid for by a member of the Portsmouth Unitarian chapel). He entered Manchester College (then at York) in 1820, and became a Unitarian minister at Salford, Manchester, then with the same congregation at Strangeways, Manchester (1825-64). He also ran a school to augment his income, and was enthusiastically engaged in promoting education for all. He was a...
WREFORD, John Reynell. b. Barnstaple, Devon, 12 December 1800; d. London, 2 July 1881. He was educated for the Unitarian ministry at Manchester College (then at York). He was appointed co-pastor of the New Meeting, Birmingham, in 1826, but was forced to leave his post in 1831 because of trouble with his voice. In conjunction with another Unitarian minister from Birmingham, Hugh Hutton, he then opened a school at Edgbaston, Birmingham. He retired to Bristol and died in London.
Wreford published...
MURRAY, Judith Sargent. b. Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1 May 1751; d. Natchez, Mississippi, 9 June 1820. She was an essayist, writer for women's rights, poet, and playwright. Possibly she was the first American-born woman to have a hymn published in a hymnal.
Judith's parents were Winthrop Sargent (1727-1793) and Judith Sanders Sargent (1731-1793). The Sargent family had been well established in Gloucester for several generations. 'In spite of his activity in introducing Universalism...
HOWE, Julia Ward (née Ward). b. New York, 27 May 1819; d. Portsmouth, Rhode Island, 17 October 1910. She was the daughter of a wealthy and respected New York banker. In 1843 she married Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876), founder of the Perkins School for the Blind at Watertown, Boston, Massachusetts. Howe, who was much older than Julia, had old-fashioned views about the place of women in marriage, and she was repressed and unhappy, partly because her husband was bisexual and unfaithful. Her...
Long ago the lilies faded. William George Tarrant* (1853-1928).
Tarrant was one of the editors of the Essex Hall Hymnal (1890), a book for the use of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, and named after Essex Hall in London, the headquarters of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association. None of his hymns was found in that book, but in the Revised Edition of 1902 this hymn, with its beautiful first line, was included. It was entitled 'The Constant Presence'. It was loosely based on the...
AKERMAN, Lucy Evelina, (née Metcalf). b. Wrentham, Massachusetts, 21 February 1816; d. Providence, Rhode Island, 21 February 1874. She was an active Unitarian: some of her hymns were printed at Boston, with those of Jones Very*, under the title of Order of Exercises at the Unitarian Festival, Faneuil Hall, Tuesday, May 26 1863. Another volume, Nothing but leaves: a poem, was published at Philadelphia in 1868.
She married Charles Akerman. The couple lived at Providence, Rhode Island, where,...
My God, all nature owns Thy sway. Helen Maria Williams* (1759-1827). This is one of four 'Paraphrases from Scripture' from Williams's Poems (1786). This one is on Psalm 74: 16, 17. It was described in JJ as being 'in C.U.' ('Common Use'), and as found in Hymns for the Christian Church and Home (1840), compiled by James Martineau*. It is no longer used in Britain, and its time in the USA seems to be over also:
PSALM lxxiv. 16, 17.
My God! all nature owns Thy sway,Thou giv'st the night, and...
My God, since I can call thee mine. John Murray* (ca. 1740-1815).
This is the fourth of five hymns, published in the 1782 edition of Christian Hymns, Poems and Sacred Songs, Sacred to the Praise of God, Our Saviour, compiled by English Universalist James Relly and his brother John Relly. The book was first published in London in 1754, and the 1782 edition was published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for Noah Parker (1734-1787), a convert of Murray's and preacher in Portsmouth (Brewster, pp....
Mysterious presence, source of all. Seth Curtis Beach* (1837-1932). First printed in the 'Order of Exercises at the Fiftieth Annual Visitation of the Harvard Divinity School, 17 July 1866', having been written for that occasion. It first appeared in the Hymn and Tune Book for the Church and Home (1868). The hymn subsequently appeared in nearly every American Unitarian hymnbook in the 20th century, including Singing the Living Tradition (1993). Other books to print it included the St Alban...
Nothing but leaves! the spirit grieves. Lucy Akerman* (1816-1874). Written ca. 1858, and printed in the Christian Observer (New York). According to JJ, it was inspired by a sermon of M.D. Conway. The text to which it refers is Mark 11.13: 'he found nothing but leaves'. It was then printed anonymously in the first volume of a new periodical, The Family Treasury of Sunday Reading (Edinburgh and London, 1859). It was 'a special favourite at the early Moody and Sankey meetings' where it was sung...
O holy night, the stars are brightly shining. John Sullivan Dwight* (1813-1893), from the French of Placide Cappeau* (1808-1877).
This is a translation of Placide Cappeau's Christmas hymn, 'Minuit, chrétiens, c'est l'heure solennelle'*. It dates from 1855. An edition with French and German texts only was published in England in 1852; another (n.d., with English words by C.L. Kenney) was one of many published in England and France. In the USA 'O holy night' appeared in the Plymouth...
O Love Divine, that stooped to share. Oliver Wendell Holmes* (1809-1894).
Written in 1859, and published in Holmes's The Professor at the Breakfast Table (Boston, 1860), a collection of his essays and table talk. The first line is sometimes printed as 'O Love Divine, that stoop'st to share' (Holmes's Complete Poetical Works has 'stooped'). It had four stanzas:
O Love Divine, that stooped to share Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear, On Thee we cast each earth-born care, We smile at pain...
O suffering friend of human kind. Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch* (1809-1870).
This unusual hymn is from Bulfinch's Contemplations of the Saviour: a series of extracts from the Gospel history, with reflections and original and selected hymns (Boston, 1832). For the structure and arrangement of this book, see the entry on 'Hail to the Sabbath day'*. In Contemplations it was from Part VI, 'To the Departure of Jesus from Galilee': it forms section xxxv (the sections were numbered separately). The...
Our Father, through the coming year. William Gaskell* (1805-1884).
According to JJ, p.406, this hymn was one of the many hymns by Gaskell in John Relly Beard*'s A Collection of Hymns for Public and Private Worship (London and Manchester, 1837). JJ also noted that the original printing began 'Father, throughout the coming year...'.
It was not in either of the two principal collections by James Martineau*, Hymns for the Christian Church and Home (1840) and Hymns of Praise and Prayer (1873)....
Our Father, while our hearts unlearn. Oliver Wendell Holmes* (1809-1894).
This hymn is six stanzas was entitled 'Hymn written for the twenty-fifth Anniversary Reorganization of the Boston Young Men's Christian Union, May 31, 1893', and published in Holmes's Complete Poetical Works (Boston and New York, 1890). In Britain it was included by William Garrett Horder* in Worship-Song (1905), and it was chosen by the undogmatic Percy Dearmer* for SofP and SofPE. Dearmer described it (Songs of...
Press on, press on! ye sons of light. William Gaskell* (1805-1884).
According to JJ, p. 406, this was one of the many hymns by Gaskell that appeared in John Relly Beard*'s A Collection of Hymns for Public and Private Worship (London and Manchester, 1837). It was not in either of the two principal collections by James Martineau*, Hymns for the Christian Church and Home (1840) and Hymns of Praise and Prayer (1873). However, it became one of the best known of Gaskell's hymns in the USA. It had...
EMERSON, Ralph Waldo. b. Boston, Massachusetts, 25 May 1803; d. Concord, 27 April 1882. The brilliant son of a Congregational minister, he was educated at Boston Latin School (1812-17) and Harvard (AB 1821). After teaching for a few years, he returned to Harvard to study Divinity and Theology (1825-26). He was licensed to preach in 1826, and in 1829 he became junior pastor of the Second Unitarian Church of Boston. He married in 1829, but his wife's death in 1831 distressed him greatly: he...
COLLYER, Robert Staples. b. Keighley, Yorkshire, England, 8 December 1823; d. 1912. Collyer came from a poor family, which moved to Blubberhouses, near Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire, when he was a baby. His father became a blacksmith. Robert left school at the age of eight, and worked 14-hour days in a linen factory. When he was older and stronger he was apprenticed to a blacksmith, and found work at Ilkley and studied at night. Following the death of his wife and daughter in 1849 he became a...
GREG, Samuel. b. Manchester, 6 September 1804; d. Bollington, near Macclesfield, 14 May 1876. His father was a prosperous Unitarian mill-owner at Styal, near Manchester. He was educated at Unitarian schools in Nottingham and Bristol and at Edinburgh University. He became a mill-owner at Bollington, near Macclesfield, Cheshire, where he was a good employer, creating a model village, and providing educational opportunities for his workers, such as flower shows and music classes; but they became...
JOHNSON, Samuel. b. Salem, Massachusetts, 10 October 1822; d. North Andover, Massachusetts, 19 February 1882. Johnson graduated from Harvard College (AB, 1842) and Harvard Divinity School (1846). Always a Unitarian and a free thinker even by the liberal standards of Unitarianism, he formed and served the Free Church at Lynn, Massachusetts (1853-70). He 'looked with distaste upon all parties, sects, lodges, and other organized forms of social groups… and never allowed it to affiliate with the...
LONGFELLOW, Samuel. b. Portland, Maine, 18 June 1819; d. Portland, 3 October 1892. He was educated at Harvard College (BA, 1839) and Harvard Divinity School (BDiv, 1846). He served Unitarian congregations in Fall River, Massachusetts (1848-51); Brooklyn, New York (1853-60); and Germantown, Pennsylvania (1860-83). His first venture into hymnody was A Book of Hymns and Tunes for the Sunday-school, the Congregation, and the Home (New York, 1860, Boston, 1861). With his close friend Samuel Johnson*...
ADAMS, Sarah Flower (née Flower) . b. Great Harlow, Essex, 22 February 1805; d. London, 14 August 1848. She was the daughter of Benjamin Flower, a radical journalist (in 1799 he was imprisoned for attacking a speech of Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff). With her sister Eliza (b. 1803) who was a fine musician, she was a member of the Unitarian chapel at Finsbury of the celebrated William Johnson Fox*, a brilliant and inspiring preacher and later Member of Parliament for Oldham. As young women...
BALLOU, Silas. b. Cumberland, Rhode Island, 24 February 1753; d. Richmond, New Hampshire, 10 February 1837. Silas Ballou was the son of James (1723-1812) and Tamasin (née) Cook Ballou (1725-1804) , and a cousin of Hosea Ballou*. He was largely self-educated and his verses were popular with his peers. In addition to hymns, he wrote several patriotic ballads and occasional verses. He married Hannah Hilton (1756-1837) in 1774 and they had seven children.
Ballou compiled an early Universalist...
Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith (1875). This is the title of a substantial anthology of American Unitarian hymnody, edited by Alfred P. Putnam (Boston, 1875). Because Unitarianism was flourishing at the time, especially in the Eastern States of the USA, it contained much of permanent value by writers whose work has continued to feature in hymn books of all denominations, such as Samuel Johnson*, Samuel Longfellow*, Oliver Wendell Holmes*, Edmund Hamilton Sears*, and Sarah Elizabeth...
Still will we trust, though earth seem dark and dreary. William H. Burleigh* (1812-1871).
This hymn was published in The Christian Hymn Book (1865), and then by Charles Dexter Cleveland* in Lyra Americana (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1865; Lyra Sacra Americana, London and New York, 1868). It had five 4-line stanzas:
Still will we trust, though earth seem dark and dreary, And the heart faint beneath his chastening rod: Though rough and steep our pathway, worn and weary, Still will...
The Lord is in his holy place. William Channing Gannett* (1840-1923)
Written for the dedication of a church in Chicago, and published in Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith (Boston, 1975), edited by Alfred P. Putnam. It was later included in The Thought of God in hymns and poems (Boston, 1885), the first of a series of three collections with that title edited by Channing with Frederick Lucian Hosmer*. It is a most unusual hymn; perhaps for that very reason it caught the eye of Percy...
The voice of God is calling. John Haynes Holmes* (1879-1964).
Holmes' text was commissioned in early 1913 by The Young People's Religious Union of Boston, Massachusetts [Unitarian]. It was composed on board the S. S. Laconia during his voyage home from England. Holmes describes writing the hymn in his 'Introduction' to his Collected Hymns (p.18):
. . . here I was on a swift ship headed for New York, and not a line of my hymn written. I had tried my hand at composition several times...
Though lowly here our lot may be. William Gaskell* (1805-1884).
Written before 1860, when it was printed in the Second Edition of Ellen Coulthard's Psalms, Hymns, and Anthems. It is the one hymn by Gaskell that has become widely known in Britain outside Unitarianism. Although it mentions 'high work' in line 2 and again in stanza 4, it is concerned more with the 'work' of the Christian life than about work itself (cf. 'Stay, Master, stay upon this heavenly hill* by Samuel Greg*). It is a simple...
The group of British churches which collectively came to be known as Unitarian have been characterized by significant and continuous developments in their theological positions, moving from an broadly Arian position at the beginning of the 18th century to a clear Unitarian Christian position by the end of the 19th. Since the beginning of the 20th century some ministers and congregations who have adopted a more Universalist (and not necessarily Theistic) theology have even begun to challenge...
When God would prove his love. John Murray* (ca. 1740-1815).
This was the second of five hymns first published in the 1782 edition of Christian Hymns, Poems and Sacred Songs, Sacred to the Praise of God, Our Saviour, compiled by English Universalist James Relly and his brother John Relly. The book was first published in London in 1754, and the 1782 edition was published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for Noah Parker (1734-1787), a convert of Murray's and preacher in Portsmouth (Brewster, pp....
While Thee I seek, protecting Power. Helen Maria Williams* (1759-1827).
This was from Williams's Poems (1786), in which it was entitled 'Hymn':
While thee I seek, protecting Power! Be my vain wishes still'd; And may this consecrated hour With better hopes be fill'd. Thy love the powers of thought bestow'd, To thee my thoughts would soar; Thy mercy o'er my life has flow'd- That mercy I adore. In each event of life, how clear, Thy ruling hand I see; Each blessing to my soul more dear,...
GANNETT, William Channing. b. Boston, Massachusetts, 13 March 1840; d. Rochester, New York State, 15 December 1923. He was a member of a great Unitarian dynasty of the 19th century in the United States: he was the son of Ezra Stiles Gannett (1801-1871), a friend of the notable preacher and scholar William Ellery Channing (1780-1842, after whom William Channing Gannett was named, and by whom he was baptized); and the daughter of Anna Linzee Tilden (d. 1846: see Wider, 1997).
William Channing...
TARRANT, William George. b. Pembroke, South Wales, 2 July 1853; d. Wandsworth, London, 15 January 1928. He was born in a military barracks, the son of a soldier who was killed at the siege of Sebastopol in the Crimean War. He was apprenticed to a silversmith in Birmingham, where he fell under the influence of a Unitarian minister of the Churches of Christ, George Dawson. Encouraged by Dawson, he entered London University (BA, 1883), becoming the Unitarian minister of the church at Wandsworth in...
FOX, William Johnson. b. Wrentham, Suffolk, 1 March 1786; d. London, 3 June 1864. He was brought up in Norwich, to which his family moved when he was a small child in 1788. He was a clerk in a Bank at Norwich from 1799 to 1806, educating himself in his spare time. With the intention of becoming an Independent minister, he attended the Independent academy at Homerton, near London, serving briefly as a minister to a congregation at Fareham in Hampshire. After leaving Homerton in 1810 he moved...