Let there be light! Thus spake the Word. J. Montgomery. [Missions.] This hymn was printed in the Evangelical Magazine, June, 1818, in 8 stanzas of 4 lines, and headed "Hymn composed for the Anniversary of the Missionary Society by J. Montgomery, Esq., and sung at Spa Fields Chapel, May 14th, 1818." It was included in Cotterill's Selection, 8th ed., 1819, No. 236, in 4 stanzas of 8 lines. In Montgomery's Christian Psalmist, 1825, No. 554, stanza iv. is omitted, and the rest are divided into 6 stanzas of 4 lines. This form is repeated in his Original Hymns, 1853, No. 260, is the revised text, and is in several collections in Great Britain and America. The hymn "From day to day, before our eyes," in Beecher's Plymouth Collection, 1855, the N. Y. Songs for the Sanctuary, 1865, and other American hymnbooks, is composed of st. iv.-viii. of the Evangelical Magazine text of 1818. (Cotterill’s stanzas iii., iv.).
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)