Bishop John H, Vincent was the founder, in 1874, of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, which gave 10-week summer lectures on Sunday school methods together with concerts and high-class entertainment. The group met at a former Methodist campground on the shore of Lake Chautauqua in the Finger Lakes district of New York State. He requested his assistant, Mary A. Lathbury to write a study hymn for the group, and the words of this hymn were the result, first sung on August 5, 1877, at the evening worship in the outdoors. The hymn was introduced to the congregation by the assistant director of music, George Coles Stebbins (1846-1945; see Biographies) who played the hymn as a cornet duet with his brother. The composer of the tune, William Fisk Sherwin, sang the hymn as a solo and then conducted the choir, all of whom were in boats a short distance from the shore. The refrain quotes Isaiah 6:3 “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” Lathbury wrote two additional stanzas a week after the first two, as she considered the hymn still unfinished. It is worthy of note that the vocative O in the refrain occurs on the single highest note of the melody. 

Mary Artemisia Lathbury was born August 10, 1841, in Manchester, New York, and was very talented in drawing and writing. Her father was local preacher, and two of her brothers were Methodist ministers. She contributed articles and verse to religious periodicals and was a zealous worker for the Sunday school movement. She founded the Look Up Legion to recruit children; by 1885 where were 4000 children in Methodist Sunday schools. She was general director of the publications of the Methodist Sunday school Union and did much to help spread the Chautauqua movement throughout the United States. She also wrote SDAH 271, “Break Thou the Bread of Life,” in similar circumstances to the present hymn. Lathbury died at East Orange, New Jersey, on October 20, 1913.

The tune CHAUTAUQUA, also known as SENNENS and EVENING PRAISE, was composed by William Fisk Sherwin (1826-1888; see Biographies). The hymn appeared in the Calvary Selection of Sacred Songs, 1878.