William Dunn Longstaff

William Dunn Longstaff was an English businessman, shipowner, philanthropist, and evangelical layman born in Sunderland, County Durham, in 1822. He began in the Church of England but supported the Welsh preacher Arthur Augustus Rees after Rees left Anglican ministry and established Bethesda Free Chapel in Sunderland. Longstaff became the chapel's treasurer and was part of a circle of prosperous Sunderland laypeople who used their resources to support evangelical causes.

Longstaff's generosity connected him with several major nineteenth-century evangelists. He befriended William Booth and supported Salvation Army work; hymnological sources also record several Longstaff texts in “The War Cry” during the 1880s. When Dwight L. Moody and Ira D. Sankey began their British campaigns in 1873 under difficult financial circumstances, Longstaff helped organize material support for the work. Sankey later remembered him as Bethesda Chapel's treasurer and as an early supporter who wrote about their British meetings.

“Take Time to Be Holy” is Longstaff's enduring contribution to hymnody. The text is generally dated around 1882 and reflects the holiness and deeper-life concerns circulating in British evangelicalism, while expressing them through practical habits of prayer, Scripture, fellowship, service, and sustained attention to Christ.