Henry Van Dyke

Henry Jackson van Dyke was an American Presbyterian minister, author, educator, and diplomat. Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1852, he studied at Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary and was ordained by the Presbytery of Brooklyn in 1879. After pastorates in Rhode Island, he served New York City's Brick Presbyterian Church from 1883 until 1899. He then returned to Princeton as professor of English literature, a post he held until 1923. Van Dyke also served as moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. General Assembly in 1902 and chaired the committee that produced the church's 1906 Book of Common Worship.

Van Dyke wrote widely in fiction, essays, poetry, sermons, travel, and devotional literature. Representative works include The Other Wise Man, Little Rivers, Fisherman's Luck, and collections of poems and hymns. His literary career was joined to public service: from 1913 to 1917 he served as United States minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg. His hymns reflect the same combination of Christian faith, literary craftsmanship, love of nature, and public-minded optimism that appears throughout his broader writing. He died at Princeton in 1933.