George Ma­the­son, in the Church of Scot­land mag­a­zine Life and Work, Jan­u­a­ry 1882:

My hymn was com­posed in the manse of In­ne­lan [Ar­gyle­shire, Scot­land] on the ev­en­ing of the 6th of June, 1882, when I was 40 years of age. I was alone in the manse at that time. It was the night of my sis­ter’s mar­ri­age, and the rest of the fam­i­ly were stay­ing over­night in Glas­gow. Some­thing hap­pened to me, which was known only to my­self, and which caused me the most se­vere men­tal suf­fer­ing. The hymn was the fruit of that suf­fer­ing. It was the quick­est bit of work I ev­er did in my life. I had the im­press­ion of hav­ing it dic­tat­ed to me by some in­ward voice ra­ther than of work­ing it out my­self. I am quite sure that the whole work was com­plet­ed in five min­utes, and equal­ly sure that it ne­ver re­ceived at my hands any re­touch­ing or cor­rect­ion. I have no na­tur­al gift of rhy­thm. All the other vers­es I have ever writ­ten are man­u­fact­ured ar­ti­cles; this came like a day­spring from on high.

St. Mar­garet (Peace), Al­bert L. Peace, 1884 (MIDI, NWC, PDF).

• Hampstead (Da­vies), H. Wal­ford Da­vies, in In hoc Sig­no, 1915, num­ber 31 (MIDI, NWC, PDF)
• Wyke, Les­lie H. Hew­ard (1897-1943) (MIDI, NWC, PDF). Hew­ard is said have writ­ten the tune while a choir boy at Man­ches­ter Ca­thed­ral.

This hymn was sung at the fun­er­al of Amer­i­can pre­si­dent Cal­vin Cool­idge, Jan­u­a­ry 7, 1933, at the Ed­wards Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church, North­amp­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts. Ac­cord­ing to Mrs. Cool­idge, it was his fa­vo­rite.