Abstract
This thesis, a biographical study of Reginald Heber,
(I783-I826), emphasizes his ability as a poet, as a preacher
and as a churchman. He is best known today through several of
his hymns which possess qualities that have endeared them to
many generations of worshipping Christians around the globe.
Less well known is the fact that he was the second Lord Bishop
to the See of Calcutta with all British India and Australia as
his diocese. Reginald Heber, the son of an English country
squire and rector, was born near the end of the eighteenth
century, in which a sleepy torpor seemed established by
precedent. His boyhood years, the first quarter of his short
and active life, were spent in the golden decade of peace
which followed the end of the American Revolutionary War5
while his adolescent years and early manhood were lived in a
Britain reacting to the challenge of the French Revolution and
its Dictator-product, Napoleon Bonaparte. Heber came to the
fullness of his powers at a time when his country was seeking
to make its adjustment to the post-war problems and the
results of its rapid industrial growth. In this pre-reform
period, he served the Church of England in the East Indian
possessions as a tolerant, statesmanlike Bishop. To show the
development of Reginald Heber, with his gracious character,
liberal viewpoint, scholarly learning and deep spirituality,
as expressed through his poetry, his preaching and churchman-
:ship in the service of the Church he loved, against the
background of these interesting and tumultuous years, has been
my aim.