The text was originally in five stanzas, although many hymnals now delete the fifth stanza. 5)–in the call to “come and worship Christ, the newborn King!” The text successively incorporates all creatures–the angels (st. Perhaps because he knew the psalms so well, Montgomery expresses a cosmic sense in this text: he reaches from Christ's incarnation to the final great day.
Entitling it 'Good Tidings of Great Joy to All People,' Montgomery republished the text with small alterations in his Christian Psalmist (1825).
Montgomery based the text in part on the French carol 'Angels We Have Heard on High' (347) it was sung to that tune for over fifty years. A writer of many Christian hymns, James Montgomery ( PHH 72) composed this Christmas and Epiphany text and published it on Christmas Eve, 1816, in the Sheffield Iris, a newspaper he edited.
