Words: :

I wrote that hymn or Christmas carol—which I called “The Angels’ Song—just be­fore Christ­mas 1892. I had just re­ceived from a dear friend a gift of five thou­sand doll­ars for my miss­ion­a­ry work in Mon­ta­na; and I wrote this as a Christ­mas greet­ing and re­mem­brance. The last verse of the orig­in­al, which does not ap­pear in the hymn as here pub­lished, ex­pressed my gra­ti­tude and was as fol­lows:

“God bless all those who help to give
From burdens a release!
God send his blessings on their home
And fill their lives with peace!”

Meeting some time after that, he asked for the car­ol that he might set it to mu­sic. I gave it to him, and he made two set­tings for it in mu­sic, one as a so­lo and the other as a quar­tet, and pub­lished it. The next year I asked him to set it to mu­sic that could be sung by Sun­day School child­ren. He did so, and I had it pub­lished in leaf­let form and had it sung in all our Sun­day schools at their Christ­mas fes­ti­val. I then wrote a chor­us for it which Mr. Coombs used near­ly as I wrote it.

In the first edi­tion of the Meth­od­ist Hymn­al this hymn was er­ron­e­ous­ly at­trib­ut­ed to C. Whit­ney Coombs, grow­ing out of the fact that he was the first com­pos­er to set it to mu­sic.

Music: Festgesang, , cir­ca 1905. Al­ter­nate tune:

• Weinacht, (1861-1953)