Her hymn beginning
Jesus, a child his course began, (Christ the Pattern of Childhood)
from Life Without and Life Within, 1859, p. 404, had some use in Great Britain as well as in America.
J. 1585 H.W.F.
Gannett, Rev. William Channing, D.D., Boston, Massachusetts, March 13, 1840—December 15, 1923, Rochester, New York. He graduated from Harvard College in 1860; taught school in Newport, Rhode Island one year; and spent four years on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, as agent for the New England Freedmen’s Society doing relief and educational work with the thousands of Negro refugees gathered there. In 1865 he studied for a year in Europe, then entered the Harvard Divinity School from which he graduated in 1868. His first pastorate was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1868-1871. He then spent several years writing a biography of his father, Ezra Stiles Gannett, who had been William Ellery Channing’s successor as minister of the Federal Street Church, Boston. He was minister of Unity Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1877-1883; served the Western Unitarian Conference for four years; was minister at Hinsdale, Illinois, 1887-1889; and of the Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York, 1889-1908, where he remained as minister-emeritus until his death. Throughout his professional career he was closely associated with Frederick Lucian Hosmer, q.v. Together they published three small collections entitled The Thought of God in Hymns and Poems, the first in 1885, the second in 1894, the third in 1918; and together they also edited Unity Hymns and Chorals, 1880, revised edition in 1911. [James Vila Blake], q.v., was co-editor of the first edition. This little hymn book is a markedly individualistic production with many of the older hymns altered to conform to the beliefs of the editors.
In these publications, in which most of their own hymns were first published, and in the careful workmanship with which their thought was brought to a perfection of poetic utterance, Gannett and Hosmer may be compared to Samuel Longfellow and Samuel Johnson whose Book of Hymns, 1846, and Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, had appeared a generation earlier.
Dr. Gannett’s hymns are listed, with annotations “based upon ms. notes kindly supplied by the author” in Julian’s Dictionary of Hymnology, pp. 1638-9, as follows:
1. Bring, O morn thy music! Night thy starlit silence! (God Everlasting)
Written in 1892, and printed in A Chorus of Faith, being an account and resumé of the Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago, 1893. Included in The Thought of God, 2nd Series, 1894, and again in several hymnals.
2. Clear in memory’s silent reaches, (Memory)
Written in 1877 for a Free Religious Association Festival, and published in The Thought of God, 1st Series, 1885.
3. From heart to heart, from creed to creed, (Faith)
Written in 1875 for 150th anniversary of the First Religious Society of Newburyport, and given in The Thought of God, 1st Series, 1885.
4. He hides within the lily, (Divine Providence)
“Consider the lilies, how they grow.” Written in 1873, and printed for use at the Free Religious Association Festival, May 30, 1873. Published in The Thought of God, 1st Series, 1885, in 4 st. of 8 l. The most widely used of the author’s hymns.
5. I hear it often in the dark, (The Voice of God)
Written at Milwaukee in 1870, and published in The Thought of God, 1st Series, 1885. Sometimes it begins with St. iii, “O God within, so close to me,” as in Hys. for Church and Home, Boston, 1895.
6. Praise to God and Thanksgiving, (Harvest)
Written in 1882 for a Harvest Festival at St. Paul, Minnesota, where he was then a pastor, and included in The Thought of God, 1st Series, 1885. In the Boston Pilgrim Hymnal, 1904, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, it begins
Praise to God, and thanks we bring,
7. Sleep, my little Jesus, (Christmas Carol)
Written for the Sunday School, St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1882, and given in The Thought of God, 2nd Series, 1894, as “Mary’s Manger Song.”
8. The Lord is in His holy place (Dedication of a Place of Worship)
Written for the Dedication of the Rev. C. W. Wendte’s Church, Chicago, April 24, 1873, and published in The Thought of God, 1st Series, 1885. It is one of the most popular and widely used of the author’s hymns.
9. The morning hangs its signal, (Morning)
This is dated by the author “Chicago, July 30, 1886,” and printed in Love to God and Love to Man, being no. 28 of the Chicago “Unity Mission” series of hymns, n.d. It is also included in The Thought of God, 2nd Series, 1894. Although a morning hymn it is adapted for use in Advent. It is usually known as “The Crowning Day.”
Of the hymns thus listed in Julian’s Dictionary Nos. 1, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 9 have been widely used and are included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. No. 1 was written to be set to J. B. Dykes’ tune Nicaea, to which it is usually sung. No. 4 is probably the earliest hymn in the English language to give a religious interpretation of the then novel and controversial doctrine of evolution. No. 9, as included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, is attributed to “William Channing Gannett and others”, being an arrangement from one of his poems.
Another fine hymn by Dr. Gannett beginning,