This hymn is one of several written by Christopher Wordsworth to inculcate the doctrines of the church and was in his Holy Year, or Hymns for Sundays and Holydays, 1862. It is based on Psalm 118:24: “This  is the day which the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” It exalts the Sabbath (although the author is referring to Sunday), and several metaphors are used, namely balm, port, garden, fountain, mountain and, in an omitted stanza, a ladder. There were originally six stanzas from which the SDAH has selected the first, third, the second half of the fourth, and the first half of the sixth. In SDAH stanza 3, the fifth word originally was refection, meaning eating, referring to feeding on the Word of God, though it is quite true that we should also reflect on it Wordsworth, a nephew of the famous poet William Wordsworth, was born in Lambeth, London, on October 30 1807. He was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he had a brilliant career, winning many prizes and graduating in 1830. He lectured at his college in classics and was ordained in the Anglican ministry in 1833. In 1836 he became public orator at the university and was appointed headmaster of Harrow Public School. In 1844 canon of Westminster Abbey. From 1850 to 1869 he was vicar of the small village of Stanford-in-the-Vale-cum-Goosy; Goosy was an even smaller village south of Stanford, Oxford shire. From this humble position he was called in 1869 to be bishop of Lincoln, a position that he held until a few weeks before his death at Harewood, near Leeds, Yorkshire, on March 21 1885. Wordsworth was a voluminous writer, for a part from his 127 original hymns, he wrote a commentary in the Bible, several volumes of history, some on the classics, sermons, pamphlets, and speeches.

ELLACOMBE is found in X. L. Hartig’s Mainzer Gesangbunch, 1833, but this is derived from a traditional tune of the eighteenth century. It appears in a hymnbook used in the private chapel of the duke of Wurttemberg, 1784. It first appeared in England in Hymns Ancient and Modern, 1868, with the words “Come, Sing with Holy Gladness.” It is a very easy melody to sing, for scores 1, 2, and 4 are identical.       

📖 Reference: Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White. Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1988.