This Child We Dedicate to Thee

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This child we dedicate to Thee

Author: Christoph Friedrich Neander; Translator: Samuel Gilman
Published in 93 hymnals

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Audio files: MIDI

Piano/Organ
	The Fruit of the Spirit

Representative Text

1 This child we dedicate to Thee,
O God of grace and purity!
In Thy great love its life prolong;
Shield it, we pray, from sin and wrong.

2 O may Thy Spirit gently draw
Its willing soul to keep Thy law;
May virtue, piety, and truth
Dawn even with its dawning youth.

Source: Baptist Hymnal 2008 #649

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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 >

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First Line:	This child we dedicate to Thee
Title:	This Child We Dedicate to Thee
Original Language:	German
Translator:	Samuel Gilman
Author:	Christoph Friedrich Neander
Meter:	8.8.8.8
Language:	English
Notes:	Spanish translation: See "A este niño da, oh Dios" by Clair E. Weldon
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

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)

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Tune

FEDERAL STREET

Henry Kemble Oliver (b. Beverly, MA, 1800; d. Salem, MA, 1885) composed FEDERAL STREET in 1832, possibly as an imitation of earlier psalm tunes in long meter. He took it to a music class taught by Lowell Mason (who may have contributed to the harmony); Mason (PHH 96) published it in his Boston Acade…

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HEBRON (Mason)

MARYTON

After various tunes had been set to this text, Gladden insisted on the use of MARYTON. Composed by H. Percy Smith (b. Malta, 1825; d. Bournemouth, Hampshire, England, 1898), the tune was originally published as a setting for John Keble's "Sun of My Soul" in Arthur S. Sullivan's Church Hymns with Tun…

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