What are these in bright array? J. Montgomery. [All Saints.] Published in his Greenland and other Poems, 1819, p. 185, in 3 stanzas of 8 lines, and headed “Saints in heaven." It was repeated in Cotterill's Selection, 1819, No. 204; in Montgomery's Christian Psalmist, 1825, No. 559; and in his Original Hymns, 1853, No. 237. It is given in several collections in Great Britain and America, and sometimes as, "Who are these in bright array?" In R. Bingham's Hymnologia Christiana Latina, 1871, it is rendered into Latin as "Quid sint cohortes lucidae."
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
James Montgomery (b. Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, 1771; d. Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, 1854), the son of Moravian parents who died on a West Indies mission field while he was in boarding school, Montgomery inherited a strong religious bent, a passion for missions, and an independent mind. He was editor of the Sheffield Iris (1796-1827), a newspaper that sometimes espoused radical causes. Montgomery was imprisoned briefly when he printed a song that celebrated the fall of the Bastille and again when he described a riot in Sheffield that reflected unfavorably on a military commander. He also protested against slavery, the lot of boy chimney sweeps, and lotteries. Associated with Christians of various persuasions, Montgomery supported missio… Go to person page >
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