Philip James Bailey

Philip James Bailey was born at Nottingham on April 22, 1816. His father was a prominent local politician, author, and proprietor of the Nottingham Mercury. In his sixteenth year, Bailey entered Glasgow University, later moving to London to study law at Lincoln's Inn, where he was called to the bar in 1835. Although trained for the legal profession, he spent much of his life immersed in literary and philosophical studies. In 1839, he published his celebrated epic poem Festus, which achieved immense popularity and ran through ten editions in England and thirty in America. His subsequent poetic volumes, including The Angel-World (1850), The Mystic (1855), and The Universal Hymn (1868), were later incorporated as episodes within expanded editions of Festus. He also published a satire titled The Age (1858) and a political treatise on international policy.

Although Festus was not written as a hymnbook, two of its lyric passages were adapted for congregational praise. The poem "Is Heaven a place where pearly streams" was adopted as a hymn in Dr. R. W. Dale's English Hymn Book, while another selection, "Call all who love Thee, Lord, to Thee," was expanded into a congregational hymn by George Rawson for the Baptist Hymnal.