The text comes from Psalms 148, which begins “Praise ye the Lord. Praise ye the Lord from the heavens: praise him in the heights. Praise ye him all his angels: praise ye him all his hosts.”

K. L. Parry, in Companion to Congregational Praise, 1953, says the hymn was first found on a four-paged sheet pasted at the end of some copies of the music edition of Psalm, Hymns, and Anthems of the Founding Hospital, London, 1796. This sheet had the title “Hymns of Praise. For Founding Apprentices Attending Divine Service to Return Thanks.” It was customary in the latter part of the eighteenth century for those in charitable institutions to be regularly involved in hymn singing.

Hymnologist John Julian clears up the apparent discrepancy in the dates of 1796 and 1801, the later being the date of a printing of the word-only edition. It was printed several times in other hymnbooks before Osler’s final stanza was added in 1853 in Cooke and Dentons’s Church Hymnal, which they picked up from Hall’s Mitre Book, 1836.

Edward Osler was born January 30, 1798, at Falmouth, Cornwall, England, and took the medical course at Guy’s Hospital, London. From 1819 to 1825 he was the house surgeon at the Swansea (Wales) Infirmary; then he joined the Royal Navy as a surgeon . Changing to literary pursuits, he moved to London and devoted the rest of his life to writing, as editor of the Royal Cornwall Gazette. He died March 7, 1863. He wrote 50 hymns and 15 psalm versions for the Mitre Hymn Book, noted above. His other hymns in SDAH is No. 405, “O God, Unseen, Yet Ever Near.”AN DIE FREUDE (To Joy) is by an unknown composer; it was used as a setting for the German poet Schiller’s Hymn to Joy, 1799. In the Foundling Hospital Collection referred to above, “Praise the Lord, Ye Heavens Adore Him” was listed to be sung with “Music by Haydn.” This music is very much in the style of Haydn, but there is no proof that he wrote it.