Sweet is the last, the parting ray

Author: Charles Jenkins

Jenkins, Charles. (Barnstable, Massachusetts, August 28, 1786--December 28, 1831, Portland, Maine). Son of Southworth and Huldah (wright) Jenkins. Married (1) Ruth Benjamin (1794-1822); (2) Amelia Leavitt. Two children. Congregational poster. Served in Greenfield, Mass., in the early 1820s and finally the Third Congregational Church, Portland, Maine, from 1824 until his death. Jenkins was a well-known clergyman and a preacher noted for his powerful, evangelical massages. He published several collections of sermons. In 1827, he quoted from his pulpit in Portland a poem, "Sweet is the last, the parting ray," which was later set to music. Although the congregation assumed this poem to be of his own composition, his authorship has never been… Go to person page >

Sweet is the last, the parting ray. [Saturday Evening.] This hymn is usually attributed to Charles Jenkins, for some years a Congregational Minister in Portland, Maine, but upon insufficient evidence. D. C. Colsworthy, says that it was repeated by Mr. Jenkins in a sermon, and the congregation supposed it to have been his own. No other claimant having appeared it is often attributed to him on this uncertain ground. J. Curtis, in his Union Collection, London, 1827, No. 519, gives it as from the "American Monthly Magazine." [Rev. F. M. Bird, M.A.]

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)