Christian Henry Bateman

Christian Henry Bateman was an English minister, editor, and hymn writer born at Wyke near Halifax, Yorkshire, in 1813. He was formed initially within the Moravian Church and exercised ministry there before entering Congregational ministry. In 1843, the year this hymn first appeared, he became minister of Richmond Place Congregational Church in Edinburgh. He later served Congregational churches in Yorkshire and Berkshire.

Bateman's best-known hymn first appeared in his Edinburgh collection “Sacred Melodies for Children” in 1843. John Julian records the original form as five stanzas, while the Canterbury Dictionary notes that Bateman reduced it to three in the 1854 “Sacred Melodies for Sabbath Schools and Families.” Hymnologist Wesley Milgate later pointed out its close relationship to William Edward Hickson's 1836 school song “Join Now in Praise, and Sing”; recent hymnological sources therefore describe Bateman's work as a substantial adaptation or rewriting rather than a creation without precedent.

At about age fifty-six Bateman took Holy Orders in the Church of England. He served as a curate in Jersey, vicar of All Saints, Child's Hill, and later curate at Penymynydd near Hawarden. He also continued producing children's devotional material, including “The Children's Hymnal and Christian Year.” He died at Carlisle in 1889.