Brightest and best of the sons of the morning

Author: Reginald Heber

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning. Bp .R. Heber. [Epiphany.] First published in the Christian Observer, Nov. 1811, p. 697, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines (the last being the first repeated); and again in his posthumous Hymns, &c, 1827, p. 25. Few hymns of merit have troubled compilers more than this. Some have held that its use involved the worshipping of a star, whilst others have been offended with its metre as being too suggestive of a solemn dance. Cotterill gave it in the 8th edition, 1819, of his Selection and omitted it from the 9th, 1820; and Elliott, following the example in detail, had it in his 1st edition Psalms and Hymns, 1835, and dropped it from the 2nd, which others have done much the same. It has, however, survived these changes, and has become one of the most widely used of the Bishop's hymns. In the American Presbyterian Psalms & Hymns for the Worship of God, Richmond, 1867, No. 69, it is given in an altered form as "Hail the blest morn! see the Great Mediator," and attributed in the Index to Tate and Brady. The Rev. R. Bingham has given a Latin rendering in his Hymnologia Christiana Latina, 1871: "Stella, micans coelo nitido magis omnibus una."

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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