John Howard Hinton

Hinton, John Howard, M.A., son of the Rev. James Hinton, Baptist minister of Oxford, was born in that city, Mar. 24, 1791. He graduated at the University of Edinburgh, and began his ministry at Haverfordwest (1816). Thence, in 1820, he removed to Reading, and in 1837, to London, where for many years he was pastor of the Baptist Church in Devonshire Square, Bishopsgate. In his later years he returned to Reading, but spent his closing days at Bristol, where he died Dec. 17, 1873.
For the greater part of his life Mr. Hinton was one of the best known ministers of the Baptist denomination, and a recognised leader in all their public affairs. With him the logical faculty predominated, and he was a keen controversialist. His prose publications were numerous, being chiefly works of Theology and Practical Religion, but including also a History of the United States of North America; Memoirs of William Knibb, &c. In 1864-5 his theological writings were collected and re-published in seven volumes. He wrote a large number of hymns, usually composing one to suit his sermon when he could not find one adapted thereto in the book used at his chapel. A few are printed at the end of his Theological Lectures, &c. Many are preserved in manuscripts in the Library of the Baptist Union, at the Mission House in Furnival Street.

Three only are in common use and are as follows:—
1. Father of all, before Thy throne. A Parental Prayer.
2. Once I was estranged from God. A Grateful Retrospect.
3. 0 Thou that hearest, let our prayer. Prayer for a Revival.
These were in the Baptist Selection, enlarged, 1838. No. 1 had appeared in the 1828 ed. of that Selections, and in Hymns by a Minister, 1833. It is in Spurgeon's Our Own Hymn Book, 1866, and Nos. 2 and 3 are in the Baptist Psalms & Hymns, 1858.
These hymns are fair in quality, but Mr. Hinton was greater as a public man and theologian than as a hymn-writer.
[Rev. W. R. Stevenson, M.A.]

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology