The above hymns have had much less use in this country than in Great Britain. Nos. 7 and 10 are in the Universalist Church Harmonies, 1895; nos. 1 and 7 in Hymns of the Spirit. 1937, no. 7 in The Hymnal, 1940; and no. 3 in the Isles of Shoals Hymn Book. The others, though very acceptable expressions of the religious thought and feeling in the era in which the author lived, have now dropped out of use.

J. 195-6 Revised H.W.F

Chadwick, Rev. John White, Marblehead, Massachusetts, October 19, 1840—December 11, 1904, Brooklyn, New York. After two years of study at the Bridgewater Normal School, and a shorter period at Phillips Exeter Academy, he entered the Harvard Divinity School, from which he graduated in 1864. He received the degree of A.M. 1888. In December, 1864, he was ordained minister of the Second Unitarian Church, Brooklyn, where he remained until his death. He was an influential preacher and a prolific author in both prose and verse, his principal publications being a Book of Poems, 1876, Nazareth Town, 1883 (poems), the two being later combined and republished in 1888 with the earlier title; The Bible Today, 1879: Old and New Unitarian Belief, 1894; and first-rate biographies of Theodore Parker, 1901, and William Ellery Channing, 1903. After his death a small volume was published entitled Later Poems, 1905, and his printed sermons have been collected in 14 volumes. As a young man he became a close friend of [W. C. Gannett], q.v., and [F. L. Hosmer], q.v., both of whom were also born in 1840, though not his classmates in the Divinity School, and his hymns are expressions of a theological outlook similar to theirs, notably in his endeavor to give a religious interpretation to the then disputed doctrine of evolution. Although several of his hymns are of exceptionally fine quality, he often wrote in haste, lacking the patience with which his two friends sought for the precise word to convey their meaning, but he often abbreviated or re-wrote his verses at the request of hymn-book editors, or willingly accepted their proposed alterations. The result is that some of his hymns now appear in forms which depart considerably from their original texts. His secular poems, mostly the utterances of a nature lover, are often the too hastily written verse of a minor poet.

His Book of Poems, 1888, and Later Poems, 1905, include all his hymns, three of which had little use, viz:

1. A gentle tumult in the earth, (Easter) 1876

2. Everlasting Holy One, (Invocation) 1875

3. O God, we come not as of old, (Worship) 1874

His best known hymn was written for the Visitation Day exercises at the Harvard Divinity School, 1864,

4. Eternal Ruler of the ceaseless round,

It has been widely used in Great Britain and in this country. Other hymns by him have had considerable use, as follows:

5. Another year of setting suns, (New Year’s) 1873

This was written in ten stanzas beginning

“That this shall be a better year,”

but in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, only stas. 5, 6, 7, and 10 are given, beginning as above.

6. It singeth low in every heart, (Commemoration) 1876

Written for the 25th anniversary of the dedication of his church in Brooklyn, and widely used.

7. Now sing we a song of the harvest, (Thanksgiving Day) 1871

8. O Love Divine, of all that is, (A song of Trust) 1865

9. O Thou, whose perfect goodness crowns, (Anniversary Hymn)

Written in 1889 for the 25th anniversary of his ordination.

10. Thou glorious God, before whose face, (Anniversary Hymn)

Undated.

11. Thou whose spirit dwells in all, (Easter)

Written in 1890.

12. Thy seamless robe conceals Thee not, (Jesus)

Written in 1876. Included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, but not in later publications.

13. What has drawn us thus apart, (Unity of Spirit)

Written in 1891.

Several of the above hymns, as printed in current hymn-books, consist of selected stanzas, or have been slightly altered from their original forms, in most cases by Gannett and Hosmer, for inclusion in their collection Unity Hymns and Chorals, 1880, 1911. Two others included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, were not written as hymns but have been quarried out of verses in Later Poems, by permission of the author’s widow, viz: