William Parsons Lunt

Lunt, William Parsons, D.D., son of Henry Lunt, was born at Newburyport, Massachusetts, April 21, 1805. He entered Harvard College in 1819, and graduated in 1823. After acting as a tutor in a school for one year, and studying law a second, he joined the Cambridge Divinity School in 1825, and entered the Unitarian Ministry, June 19, 1828, his first charge being the Second Congregational Unitarian Society of New York City. In 1835 he became co-pastor of the Unitarian congregation at Quincy, Massachusetts, with the Rev. P. Whitney, and in 1843 sole pastor of the same congregation. During a tour in the East he died at Akabah (the ancient Ezion-Geber), March 21, 1857, and was buried a short distance from that village. Dr. Lunt was the author of several sermons, and contributed largely to the Christian Examiner and other periodicals. His hymns and poems, together with selections from his prose works, were published by his son as Gleaning. His most widely used hymn is “When driven by oppression's rod." It was "written for the public schools of Quincy, and sung by them at their Fourth of July Celebration, 1837." It is in 5 stanzas of 4 lines. This, together with several others, including one of more than ordinary merit for Sunday schools, "Hark, the gentle Shepherd's voice" (written in 1846), are given in full in Putnam's Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith, 1875. To this work we are indebted for the above facts.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)