This hymn is from Jane Leeson’s (1807-1882; see SDAH Hymns and Scenes of Childhood; or, A Sponsor’s Gift, 1842. It had three stanzas of eight lines each, headed with John 10:27: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” The last two lines of SDAH’s last stanza originally were:
Till before my Father’s throne, I shall know as I am known.

It should be pointed out that an obvious error in the original poem been perpetuated in later hymnbooks. The last line in stanza 2 says “straight and narrow way,” but should of course be “strait” as in Matthew 7:14, meaning “narrow,” as opposed to “wide” or “broad” (verse 13). Considerably altered by later editors, the SDAH version preserves three four-line stanzas, the first of which reflects John 10:28.

This interesting history of ORIENTIS PARTIBUS is given in Handbook to the Church Hymnary, 1927:

“In some parts of France, notably at Beauvais, during the Middle Ages, there was celebrated on January 14 a church festival known as the Feast of the Ass. It was intended to commemorate the flight into Egypt. On this occasion a young woman holding a child in her arms was seated on an ass, and after a procession through the streets of the town, the ass with its burden was led into the principal church, and took its stand beside the high altar while the mass was celebrated. During the service a hymn was sung, written in a mixture of medieval Latin and old French (‘macaronic’), of which the first lines were Orientis partibus adventavit asinus’ (‘from Eastern regions the ass has come’).”

The melody of this hymn has been preserved, and from it the present tune was adapted; it was published by Richard Redhead (see SDAH 157) in his Church Hymn Tunes, 1853. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1948; see Biographies) arranged this tune in a carol-like triple.

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