This Child We Dedicate to Thee

Author: Christoph Friedrich Neander

(no biographical information available about Christoph Friedrich Neander.) Go to person page >

Translator: Samuel Gilman

Gilman, Samuel, D.D., was born at Gloucester, Massachusetts, Feb. 16, 1791; graduated at Harvard, 1811, and was a tutor there from 1817 to 1819. In 1819 he became the pastor of a Unitarian congregation at Charlestown, South Carolina, and retained the same to his death. He died at Kingston, Mass., Feb. 9, 1858. His hymns include:— 1. 0 God, accept the sacred hour. Holy Communion. Contributed to Dr. Harris's Hymns for the Lord's Supper , July, 1820, republished in Sewall's Unitarian Collection, New York, 1820, and in later collections. 2. We sing Thy mercy, God of love. Holy Communion. Published as in the case of No. 1. 3. Yes, to the [that] last command. Holy Communion. Published as in the case of Nos. 1 & 2.… Go to person page >

This child we dedicate to Thee. S. Gilman. [Holy Baptism.] Professor Bird dates this 1823. Putnam, in his Singers and Songs, &c, 1874, p. 73, gives it in full as a translation from the German. The original we have not traced.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)