Henry Jackson van Dyke

Born:  November 10, 1852, Germantown, Pennsylvania.

Died: April 10, 1933, Princeton, New Jersey.

Buried: Princeton, New Jersey.

    Van Dyke attended Princeton University, then served as pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City. Seventeen years later, he returned to Princeton as a professor of English literature. Afterward, he held a number of eminent posts: American ambassador to the Netherlands and Luxembourg, moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, Commander of the Legion of Honor, and President of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He chaired the committee that compiled the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship in 1905, and helped prepare the revised in edition in 1932. His works include:

• The Reality of Religion, 1884
• The Gospel for an Age of Doubt, 1897
• A Child in the Garden
• A Noon Song
• A Parable of Immortality
• A Wayfaring Song
• America for Me
• Christ of Everywhere
• Companionable Books
• Daybreak in the Grand Canyon of Arizona
• Days Off and Other Digressions, 1907
• Fisherman’s Luck and Some Other Uncertain Things
• Four Things
• Gran’ Boule
• If All the Skies Were Sunshine
• Keeping Christmas
• Last Glimpse Here of Mark Twain, 1910
• Liberty Enlightening the World, 1917
• Life
• Little Rivers
• Love’s Nearness
• Love’s Reason
• Mare Liberum, 1917
• Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land
• The American Birthright and the Philippine Pottage, 1898
• The Blue Flower, 1902
• The First Christmas Tree
• The Lost Word: A Christmas Legend of Long Ago, 1898
• The Mansion
• The Name of France
• The Poetry of Tennyson
• The Ruling Passion, 1901
• The Story of the Other Wise Man
• The Spirit of America, 1910
• The Spirit of Christmas
• The Sun-Dial at Wells College, 1904
• The Unknown Quantity: A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales, 1912
• The Vain King
• The Wind of Sorrow
• They Who Tread the Path of Labor
• Two Schools
• When Tulips Bloom

Some of Van Dyke’s quotes that have been widely published:

There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.

Who seeks for Heaven alone to save his soul
May keep the path, but will not reach the goal;
While he who walks in love may wander far,
Yet God will bring him where the blessed are.

Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except the best.

Hymns

1. Jesus, Thou Divine Companion
2. Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
3. No Form of Human Framing
4. O Maker of the Mighty Deep