Angels, from the realms of glory

with
TUNE 585 (JUDGMENT)
REGENT SQUARE
IRIS (GLORIA)

I. Text: Origins

This hymn-carol by Moravian poet-editor James Montgomery (1771–1854) first appeared in The Iris, or The Sheffield Advertiser, vol. 30, no. 1543, 24 December 1816 (Christmas Eve), where it was called “The Nativity” and attributed to “J.M.” (Fig. 1). Montgomery had been editor of the paper since 1794. In this printing, the hymn contained five stanzas of six lines.

The hymn’s first appearance in a hymnal happened a few years later, when it was given unchanged in Thomas Cotterill’s A Selection of Psalms and Hymns for Public and Private Use, 8th ed. (Sheffield: J. Montgomery, 1819 | Fig. 2), edited and published by Montgomery.

The hymn had also been included without alteration in Edward Parsons’ A Selection of Hymns . . . for the Use of the Protestant Dissenting Congregations . . . in Leeds (1822). A few years later, the text appeared with the title “Good tidings of great joy to all people” in Montgomery’s The Christian Psalmist (1825 | Fig. 3) at number 487. In this printing, Montgomery changed three words: “Watching long in hope and fear” at 4.2 and “Justice now revokes the sentence” at 5.3. This revised version of the hymn was included in Montgomery’s Original Hymns (1853) and is considered the official or authorized version.

Later Additions and Substitutions

In the same year Montgomery released his Christian Psalmist with his revisions, the original version of the hymn appeared in a small collection called The Christmas Box (1825) published by the Religious Tract Society. In that collection was an anonymous hymn-carol in the same meter called “The Babe of Bethlehem,” beginning “Come, behold the virgin mother.” Among the 18 stanzas of this carol was one beginning “Tho’ an infant now you view him.” This carol was repeated in a condensed form in William Sandys’ Christmas Carols Ancient & Modern (1833).

This anonymous stanza, which resembles the kenosis hymn in Philippians 2, has sometimes been used as a replacement for Montgomery’s fifth stanza (more on this below). Another common substitution is a Trinitarian stanza beginning “Saints and angels join in praising,” which comes from the Salisbury Hymn-Book (1857), except in that collection, the extra stanza was in addition to the “sinners” stanza rather than a replacement for it; here, the sages were omitted.

To avoid the enjambment of the first line running into the second, this doxology has often been altered to read “All creation, join in praising / God the Father, Spirit, Son,” etc., which can be found as early as The Hymnal of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (1896).

Other common alterations include the change from “natal star” to “infant’s star,” “morning star,” or “Savior’s star.” For those desiring to avoid generic masculine language, stanza two can be changed from “God with man is now residing,” to “God with us is now residing.” 

II. Text: Analysis

“Angels, from the realms of glory” features many of the main characters of the Christmas story outside of Jesus and his family. Montgomery cared deeply about structure in hymns, stating in the preface to The Christian Psalmist (1825), “a hymn must have a beginning, middle, and end. . . . There should be a manifest gradation in the thoughts,” and this hymn has a gratifyingly clear structure. 

The subjects of the original five stanzas are angels, shepherds, sages, saints, and sinners, all alliterative except for the first. The author’s appeal to some of these groups, especially the first three, is a form of apostrophe, an address to people who are not present, as though they could respond. The first two stanzas are derived from Luke 2:8–20.

The third stanza about the magi, or sages, comes from Matthew 2. In an example of literary synecdoche, the “contemplations” the sages leave behind represent more than just thoughts; in fact, they leave behind their entire religious and vocational lives as they seek the “brighter visions” of God’s promises in the Messiah.

The fourth stanza’s subjects are arguably Simeon and Anna, who in Luke 2:25–38 are revealed as righteous and devout believers who had been “waiting for the Consolation of Israel” (2:25) and “did not depart from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day” (2:37). Montgomery here expresses a duality of emotion and expectation in the phrase “hope and fear.”

The fifth stanza is a call for believers who have already repented, and non-believers who need to repent, to also join the angels, shepherds, sages, and saints of old in the worship of the newborn king. “Justice” is personified as “revoking a sentence” as a human judge (a metonym of sorts), and “mercy” is personified as calling to all to “break your chains.” The breaking of chains is a metaphor for finding freedom from sin, guilt, and doom through Jesus Christ.

Montgomery masterfully alluded to many other scriptures in this hymn. Job 38:7 describes an event “When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy,” which is often regarded as a reference to the angels shouting and singing at creation. Montgomery connected the worship of the angels at the birth of Christ to their rejoicing at the creation of the world in a way that expands the wonder of the historical moment of the incarnation.

In stanza 2, Montgomery acknowledged Christ’s title of “God with us,” or the “Immanuel” of Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23. The citation of “infant light” also refers to the gospel of John’s emphasis on Jesus as the “Light of the World” (John 1:9, John 8:12). Stanza 3 contains an allusion to Haggai 2:7 (“I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,” says the Lord of hosts). In stanza 4, Montgomery interpreted Jesus’ appearance in the temple as a baby as a fulfillment of Malachi 3:1, which states, “And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.” 

The fifth stanza has been frequently omitted from hymnals due what J.R. Watson calls its “severe opening lines.”[1] But Watson explained why he disagreed with replacing it with the Christmas Box text:

This makes a good ending, but it loses Montgomery’s careful structure: following the first verse, there are the shepherds and then the wise men; then there is another contrast, between saints and sinners. The final verse, appealing to the sinners, is highly appropriate because it echoes the Psalm for Christmas morning, Psalm 85, especially verse 10: “Mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”[2]

Montgomery . . . looks forward and back, increasing the significance of one event by seeing it in the context of others, and seeing the entry of Christ into human history as the transformation of a fallen world.[3]

In other words, the whole fifth stanza moves from our condemned, sinful state to the realization of the newborn Christ’s ability to satisfy justice’s demands, pour out his mercy, and thus save us from the chains of doom and pain. When stanza four is sung as the last stanza, it causes the singers to put themselves in the place of the “saints” who rejoice after waiting for Christ, which is certainly a helpful perspective, but Montgomery’s original final stanza leaves the worshipper with a more fully-orbed reason to gratefully “come and worship, worship Christ the newborn King.” 

Literary scholar Leland Ryken compared the scope of Montgomery’s hymn to another New Testament passage:

Hebrews 1:1–2 follows the same pattern that the poem does of presenting Christ as the fulfillment and replacement of earlier things: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he also created the world.”[4]

The hymn is skillfully constructed in trochaic 8.7.8.7.4.7, with a consistent rhyme scheme of abab, wherein the a rhyme is a double rhyme (using two syllables). The repetition of the word “worship” in the last two lines of every stanza (epizeuxis) adds a sense of urgency to the call, and this is compounded when the fifth line is repeated, as is common with musical settings of this meter.

III. Tunes

1. TUNE 585b (JUDGMENT)

Montgomery did not include tunes or tune recommendations in his collections, so there is no way to know for sure which tune he preferred, but one suitable tune in circulation among the Moravians was a tune by Christian Ignatius Latrobe (1758–1836) from his Hymn-Tunes, Sung in the Church of the United Brethren (London: J. Bland, 1790 | Fig. 6). In that collection, it was simply dubbed “T. 585. b.” intended for the hymn “Lo! he cometh! countless trumpets” by John Cennick, which had appeared as number 856 in A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the Protestant Church of the United Brethren (1789). Latrobe’s strong, syllabic tune was reprinted in some other collections, including The Hymn Tunes of the Church of the Brethren (1824), and therefore would have been available when “Angels from the realms of glory” was gaining its audience. In newer Moravian hymnals, this tune is called JUDGMENT.

2. REGENT SQUARE

The most popular tune pairing, especially in the United States and Canada, is REGENT SQUARE by Henry Smart (1813–1879), named after Regent Square Church in London. Like Montgomery, Smart also resided in Sheffield, near Leeds, for some time. Smart’s tune was first published in Psalms and Hymns for Divine Worship (1866 | Fig. 7), where it was given with “Bright with all his crowns of glory” by Edward Denny and “Glory be to God the Father” by Horatius Bonar. Lutheran scholar Fred L. Precht called this “Henry Smart’s best and most celebrated tune.”[5] Erik Routley similarly said, “It is perhaps the best tune of one of the soundest of nineteenth-century composers.”[6]

The pairing of REGENT SQUARE with “Angels from the realms of glory” was in print in the United States as early as 1871 in The Baptist Praise Book for Congregational Singing (Fig. 8). It was one of two recommended texts on the page, along with “Shepherds, hail the wondrous stranger,” an anonymous text from Thomas Hastings’ and William Patton’s Christian Psalmist (1830).

3. IRIS (GLORIA)

In England, the most common tune setting is IRIS (or GLORIA), from the French carol “Les anges, dans nos campagnes,” known in English as “Angels we have heard on high.” This pairing was first conceived by the editors of The Oxford Book of Carols (1928 | Fig. 9), where it was harmonized by Martin Shaw, and it was further popularized through its appearance in the Songs of Praise, Enlarged (1931).

The editors of the New Oxford Book of Carols (1992) were less favorable to the pairing, saying the editors of the 1928 edition “chose the French tune simply because of the coincidental similarity of the opening stanzas. Their substitution of the refrain ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ from ‘Les anges’ for Montgomery’s ‘Come and worship Christ the newborn King’ is incongruous with the poem’s eighteenth-century idiom,”[7] meaning the French carol’s macaronic (bilingual) character. Nevertheless, this pairing has endured.

by JAMES CHEESMAN
with CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
1 December 2023

Footnotes:

1. J.R. Watson & Kenneth Trickett, “Angels from the realms of glory,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: CDH

2. J.R. Watson, “Angels from the realms of glory,” An Annotated Anthology of Hymns (Oxford: University Press, 2002), p. 248.

3. J.R. Watson, The English Hymn (Oxford: University Press, 1997), p. 313.

4. Leland Ryken, “Angels from the realms of glory,” 40 Favorite Hymns for the Christian Year (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2020), p. 150.

5. Fred L. Precht, “Angels from the realms of glory,” Lutheran Worship Hymnal Companion (St. Louis: Concordia, 1992), p. 61.

6. Erik Routley, “Regent Square,” Companion to Congregational Praise (London: Independent Press, 1953), p. 13.

7. Hugh Keyte & Andrew Parrott, “Angels from the realms of glory,” New Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford: University Press, 1992), p. 351.

Related Resources:

John Julian, “Angels from the realms of glory,” A Dictionary of Hymnology (London: J. Murray, 1892), pp. 68–69: HathiTrust

Percy Dearmer & Archibald Jacob, “Angels from the realms of glory,” Songs of Praise Discussed (Oxford: University Press, 1933), pp. 46–47.

Albert Edward Bailey, The Gospel in Hymns (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950), pp. 158–159.

Paul Westermeyer, “Angels, from the realms of glory,” Hymnal Companion to Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2010), pp. 51–52.

Carl P. Daw Jr., “Angels from the realms of glory,” Glory to God: A Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2016), pp. 150–151.

Walter E. Krueger & Joseph Herl, “Angels from the realms of glory,” Lutheran Service Book Companion to the Hymns, vol. 1 (St. Louis: Concordia, 2019), pp. 100–103.

“Angels from the realms of glory,” Hymns and Carols of Christmas: HCC