John Brownlie, in his Hymns and Hymn Writers of the Church Hymnary, 1899, quotes this story by Jemima Luke regarding the writing of this hymn: 

“I went in the year 1841 to the normal infant school in Gray’s Inn Road to obtain some knowledge of the system. . . . Among the marching pieces at Gray’s Inn Road was a Greek air, ‘Salamis’ the pathos of which took my fancy. ··. Having been recalled home, I went one day on some missionary business to the little town of Wellington, five miles from Taunton, in a stagecoach. It was a beautiful spring morning, it was an hour’s ride, and there was no other inside passenger. On the back of an old envelope I wrote in pencil the first two of the verses now so well known, in order to teach the tune to the village school, Blagdon, southwest of Bristol, supported by his stepmother, and which it was my province to visit. The third verse was added afterwards to make it a missionary hymn.” 

The Greek tune that so impressed her was published with her words in the Sunday School Teacher’s Magazine, 1841. An arrangement of it by William Bradbury and Winifred Douglas under the name LUKE was in the Episcopal Hymnal 1940. The hymn is based, of course, on the story of Jesus blessing the children, recorded in Matthew 19:14, 15. 

Jemima Thompson was born August 19, 1813, at Islington, north London, to a father who was responsible for founding the Sunday School Union and the Bible Society, and for supplying floating chapels for sailors. It was her fond hope to someday be a missionary to India, but a severe illness made the fulfillment of these plans impossible. She authored several books and religious articles for magazines. In 1843 she married a Congregational minister, the Reverend Samuel Luke. For a time she was a teacher in the school for infants mentioned above, and wrote songs for the children to sing. She died at Newport, Isle of Wight, February 2, 1906. 

EAST HORNDON (the name of an English village near Brentwood, Essex), is an old English traditional melody, arranged for these words in the English Hymnal, 1906, by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958; see Biographies).