Praise and thanksgiving be to our Creator

Praise and thanksgiving be to our Creator. Frank Whiteley* (1914-1998) and Harold Francis Yardley* (1911-1990). Encouraged by Stanley L. Osborne*, in the autumn of 1969 Frank Whiteley drafted a hymn text about baptism derived from his research for a Master’s thesis at Emmanuel College in Toronto which would be completed the following year under the title ‘The Doctrine and Practice of Infant Baptism in the Traditions of the United Church of Canada’(1970). The original hymn consisted of five stanzas. Whitely gave the hymn text to Harold Francis Yardley to shape into poetic verse. The opening three stanzas, an invocation to the three persons of the Trinity prior to the act of baptism,...