In 1908 the London Missionary Society sponsored a pageant to depict the triumphs of missionary work. The society hired the large Agricultural Hall in Islington, north London, for the display. The month-long exhibition was named “The Orient in London,” and the Reverend Dugald Macfadyen was in charge. He asked his uncle, William Arthur Dunkerley, John Oxenham, which he took from a character in Charles Kingsley’s to write the libretto for the pageant. Dunkerley adopted the pen name of novel Westward Ho! Under this name he wrote the words of this hymn for the exhibition. It reflects his strong feeling against sectarianism. Incidentally, young Winston Churchill opened the pageant. The theme of the hymn reflects the apostle Paul’s statement: “There is neither Jew nor ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). The hymn was first published in Oxenham’s Bees in Amber, 1913.

Dunkerley was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England, on November 12, 1852, and educated at Victoria University in that city. After graduation he worked for his father in his business as a wholesale provision merchant. After five years in the business, he married and went to New York to start a branch there. He was interested in journalism, and on his return to England in 1881 he started two magazines. His writing was so successful that he his whole time to it. In his journalistic career he wrote more than 40 novels and 20 volumes of prose and poetry. Much of his writing was religious, on the life of Christ; he taught a Bible class in Ealing after he moved there in 1913. He was a member of the Congregational Church but was very interested in Roman Catholicism. He died at High Salvington, Worthing, Sussex, in January 1941.

The tune ST. PETER was composed by Alexander Robert Reinagle (1799-1877; see also SDAH 238 for a lower key).

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