| Walter John Mathams | |
| Birth Date: | 30 October 1853[1] |
| Birth Place: | London, England |
| Death Date: | [2] |
| Death Place: | Swanage, England |
| Church: | Baptist |
| Other Names: | W. J. Mathams |
| Education: | Regent's Park College, Oxford. |
Walter John Mathams was a nineteenth-century British hymnwriter, soldier and minister, who attended Regent's Park College in London in the 1870s as a Baptist ministerial student before converting to the Established Church of Scotland in 1900. He also founded the Ladies' Guild of the Sailors' Society.[3]
After going to sea early on in life, he found himself participating in the Yukon Gold Rush. After failing to find his fortune, he returned to England by way of Palestine. Once back in the United Kingdom, he began studying for Baptist ministry. In 1874, he entered Regent's Park Baptist College, and subsequently became the pastor at Preston, Lancashire. In 1879, his health failing, he went for a while to Australia.
Returning to England, he became, in 1883, minister at Falkirk, Scotland, and at Birmingham in 1888. He entered the ministry of the Established Church of Scotland in 1900, served for three years as chaplain to the Royal Scots Borderers, in Egypt. In 1906, he became an associate minister at Stronsay, in the Orkney Islands. In 1909, he was ordained a full minister at St. Columba's Church, Mallaig, on the north west Scottish coast. In 1919, he retired and moved to Roslin, near Edinburgh. After his wife Alexa Jane died, he moved to Swanage, Dorset[2]
Mathams published most of his hymns whilst a student at Regent's Park College, in a small hymnbook entitled "At Jesus' Feet".[1] Attributed to him by the Dictionary of Hymnology are the following hymns: