George Walker

Walker, George, F.R.S., born 1735, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, educated by his uncle, Thomas Walker, dissenting minister at Durham, whom, after further study at Dr. Rotherhain's academy at Kendal, and at Edinburgh and Glasgow, he succeeded in the pulpit there. From Durham Walker removed to Great Yarmouth, and thence in 1772 to the Warrington Academy. While there he published The Doctrine of the Sphere. This and his Treatise on Conic Sections are the chief of his mathematical works. From 1774 to 1798 he was minister at the High Pavement Chapel, Nottingham, and took a prominent part in the public life of the town. His sermons on political events of the time attracted widespread attention, as did his tract The Dissenters’ Plea; or, an appeal of the Dissenters to the Justice, Honour, and Religion of the Kingdom against the Test Laws. This and other essays on religious and philosophical questions were republished after his death in two volumes of Essays on Various Subjects, with a Memoir, 1809. Four volumes of Sermons on Various Subjects were also published (1808), the first two volumes having first appeared in 1790, during his Nottingham ministry. In 1798 he removed to Manchester, as Professor of Theology in the recently founded Manchester Academy and also became president of the Philosophical and Literary Society. His health giving way he spent the last months of his life in the neighbourhood of Liverpool, and died in 1807, while on a visit to London. He was buried in Bunhill-fields. For his Nottingham congregation Walker published A Collection of Psalms and Hymns for Public Worship, unmixed with the disputed doctrines of any sect. Warrington, Printed by W. Eyres, for the Editor. 1738. This is one of the chief of the collections made for congregations of Presbyterians in the period of their transition towards Unitarianism. Of the 387 psalms and hymns 141 are taken from Watts, and of the rest the names of 24 authors are given, including T. Scott, Barbauld and Kippis. Walker himself, holding a "tempered Arianism," freely altered the hymns adopted, both for doctrinal reasons, and "to improve the style" of the compositions. He also contributed hymns of his own. Of these the best known are:—
1. Enough of life's vain scene I've trod.
2. Though many faults do me reprove. Part of "How foolish to oppose to God."
3. The earth proclaims its Lord. [Rev.Valentine D. Davis, B.A.]

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)