The author of this Epiphany hymn, John S.B. Monsell (1811-1875), was born in Londonderry and educated in Trinity College, Dublin.  Ordained to the priesthood in 1835, he held several positions in Ireland before being transferred to England.  As Rector of St Nicholas, Guildford he was inspecting work on the church roof; he stood on a boulder, which then moved under him and he fell, suffering various injuries.  He died a few days later from infected wounds.  Monsell was a prolific writer and an obsessive reviser, producing 11 volumes of verse and 300 hymns, (including “Fight the good fight with all thy might”).  This hymn first appeared in his Hymns of Love and Praise for the Church’s Year, 1863.  The opening line of the hymn quotes the phrase “the beauty of holiness,” from 1Chronicles 16: 29, but the phrase is also found in several psalms (29:2, 96:9, 110:3) and in later books.  In the Old Testament it apparently relates to priestly garments, but Monsell clearly has in mind the appropriate attitude or demeanour with which the worshipper is clothed for worship.  Similarly, the reference to the gifts of the Magi turns them into abstractions of Christian virtue: “gold of obedience and incense of lowliness.”  The remainder of the hymn delineates the grace that the Lord offers to his worshippers.

The hymn is sometimes sung to the tune “Sanctissimus” by William Henry Cooke (1820-1912).  The more common tune is “Was lebet, was schwebet,” from the 1754 Choral-Buch vor Johann Heinrich Reinhardt. This setting was first used in The English Hymnal of 1906.

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