IF the young Sabine Baring-Gould had listened to his father, Christianity?s most stirring hymn would never have been written.

His father did all he could to curb his son?s interests in the arts, preferring him to enter the army or become an engineer. He even warned Sabine that he would lose his inheritance if he entered the church ? a threat, thankfully, never fulfilled.

The older man?s efforts were in vain. The young Baring-Gould read classics at Cambridge and went on to become one of the nation?s most famous clergymen.

Baring-Gould has been the subject of three biographies. Now a fourth joins the canon. In the latest, ?Half My Life?, Yorkshireman Keith Lister has done enthusiasts of Baring-Gould a great service.

It is a well-researched book and one that reads easily, combining historical fact with humorous incident.

The young Baring-Gould left the pleasant pastures of West Devon?s Lew Trenchard for a parish in industrial Yorkshire. He described the northern landscape in his work, Pennycomequick:

The canal and the river run side by side, with a towpath along the former, but neither were of crystalline purity, or ordinary cleanliness; for into them the mills and dye-works discharged their odorous and discoloured refuse water, dense with oil and pigment, with impurities of every description and degree of nastiness.

He opened a mission near Wakefield. It was tough and challenging. This Christian soldier sought to win people to the church and in doing so often had to deal with the disruption of drunks ? sometimes capturing a convert to Christianity.

It was while at the mission that he penned the words for Onward Christian Soldiers especially for the Whitsun tide procession of 1865. It was originally set to music by Haydn but exploded into popular use when Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote a new tune to the hymn and Edison made it into a voice recording.

Baring-Gould later admitted that it was written in great haste and that some of the rhymes were faulty. Nonetheless, it suited the ceremony perfectly.

A strong youth carried the processional cross, a drummer beat time, and the marchers stepped out past terraced homes, singing what was to become one of the most famous hymns in the world.

In Yorkshire, Baring-Gould met and married Grace Taylor, a mill worker and mission Sunday School teacher, 16 years his junior. In his first semi-autobiographical novel, Through Flood and Flame, Baring-Gould gives an insight into his feelings for Grace:

All day his thoughts were full of her, he could not sleep . . . her happiness was to him the dearest object of life.

The union upset wealthier families in the district who felt Grace was not good enough for a clergyman. Baring-Gould may have ignored their snobbery, but was concerned enough to send his wife-to-be away to be educated in the ways of the upper classes ? it is said that years later, after meeting Grace at Lew Trenchard, George Bernard Shaw was inspired to create the character of Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion.

Baring-Gould was then appointed to the rural curacy of Dalton in north Yorkshire. The couple married and started a family. His popularity soon spread. The prime minister, Gladstone, offered him the living at East Mersea in Essex and the family headed south.

But Baring-Gould saw Mersea island as inhospitable and described the inhabitants as shy, suspicious and dull. He found escape in his writing, publishing diverse works, including a best-selling novel, Mehalah, which drew comparisons with Wuthering Heights.

Baring-Gould inherited Lew Trenchard on the death of his father in 1872, but did not return there until 1881 and swiftly took on the roles of squire and parson.

He improved St Peter?s Church, became renowned for his lack of respect for the church hierarchy, and converted much of Lew Trenchard House.

His pen increasingly filled his purse. Despite the duties of a squarson, he wrote a chapter a day on his novels and set to work with others on the prized collection of Songs of the West, capturing for posterity many ancient folk songs.

It was not only in literature that he was prolific ? he and Grace had 15 children, and, amazingly for the time, only one, Beatrice, died in infancy.

The preacher Baring-Gould recognised the effectiveness of economy. His sermons lasted eight minutes, no more, and drove home one simple point. If visiting preachers failed to make their point within ten minutes, Baring-Gould would take out his pocket watch and end the sermon.

Although a strong supporter of the squire system, he had a genuine social conscience and believed firmly in noblesse oblige, that rank carries with it responsibilities.

But the solid England known to Baring-Gould was about to be transformed by the onset of world war one and the social changes it ushered in. In 1916, Grace, bedridden by chronic rheumatoid arthritis, died as Baring-Gould read a prayer over her.

The double grave in which she was buried bore the epitaph written by her adoring husband: Half my Life.

Six years later, he died. They lie, reunited, in the double grave at Lew Trenchard?s St Peter?s Church.

l ?Half My Life? The Story of Sabine Baring-Gould and Grace, is published by Charnwood Publications, £12.95 paperback, £20 hardback. The book is available from J C Books, The Arcade, Okehampton and Bookstop, Tavistock.