Van Dyke at­tend­ed Prince­ton Un­i­ver­si­ty, then served as pas­tor of the Brick Pres­by­ter­i­an Church in New York City. Se­ven­teen years lat­er, he re­turned to Prince­ton as a pro­fes­sor of En­glish lit­er­a­ture. Af­ter­ward, he held a num­ber of em­i­nent posts: Amer­i­can am­bas­sa­dor to the Netherlands and Luxembourg, mod­er­a­tor of the General Assembly of the Pres­by­ter­i­an Church, Com­mand­er of the Legion of Honor, and Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Arts and Let­ters. He chaired the com­mit­tee that com­piled the Pres­by­ter­i­an Book of Com­mon Wor­ship in 1905, and helped pre­pare the re­vised in edit­ion in 1932. His works in­clude:

• The Reality of Religion, 1884
• The Gospel for an Age of Doubt, 1897
• A Child in the Garden
• A Noon Song
• A Parable of Immortality
• A Wayfaring Song
• Amer­i­ca for Me
• Christ of Everywhere
• Companionable Books
• Daybreak in the Grand Canyon of Arizona
• Days Off and Other Digressions, 1907
• Fisherman’s Luck and Some Other Uncertain Things
• Four Things
• Gran’ Boule
• If All the Skies Were Sunshine
• Keeping Christmas
• Last Glimpse Here of Mark Twain, 1910
• Liberty Enlightening the World, 1917
• Life
• Little Rivers
• Love’s Nearness
• Love’s Reason
• Mare Liberum, 1917
• Out-of-Doors in the Ho­ly Land
• The Amer­i­can Birthright and the Philippine Pottage, 1898
• The Blue Flower, 1902
• The First Christmas Tree
• The Lost Word: A Christmas Legend of Long Ago, 1898
• The Mansion
• The Name of France
• The Poetry of Tennyson
• The Ruling Passion, 1901
• The Story of the Other Wise Man
• The Spirit of Amer­i­ca, 1910
• The Spirit of Christmas
• The Sun-Dial at Wells Coll­ege, 1904
• The Unknown Quantity: A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales, 1912
• The Vain King
• The Wind of Sorrow
• They Who Tread the Path of Labor
• Two Schools
• When Tulips Bloom

Some of Van Dyke’s quotes that have been wid­ely pub­lished:

There is a loft­i­er am­bi­tion than mere­ly to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift man­kind a lit­tle high­er.

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who re­joice, but for those who love, time is eter­ni­ty.

Who seeks for Heav­en alone to save his soul
May keep the path, but will not reach the goal;
While he who walks in love may wan­der far,
Yet God will bring him where the blessed are.

Use the talents you pos­sess, for the woods would be ve­ry sil­ent if no birds sang ex­cept the best.

Sources

Hymns

1. Jesus, Thou Divine Companion
2. Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
3. No Form of Human Framing
4. O Lord, Our God, Thy Mighty Hand
5. O Maker of the Mighty Deep
6. O Thou Whose Boundless Love Bestows