Bishop Regfinald Heber (1783-1826): poet, preacher, churchman

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.