This two-stanza hymn employs exalted language to tell how the vastness of stellar space received our Lord when He ascended to heaven after the Resurrection. Robbins names two of the best-known constellations, the Pleiades and Orion, and uses the phrase “His footsteps trace thro’ corridors sublime.” in this connection, the following words from Early Writings, by Ellen G. White, page 41,are interesting: “December 16, 1848,the Lord gave me a view of the shaking of the powers of the heavens….The atmosphere parted and rolled back; then we could look up through the open space in Orion, whence came the voice of God. The Holy City will come down through that open space.” 

Born in Philadelphia on December 11, 1876, Howard Robbins received his B.D. degree from Episcopal Theological Seminary in 1903.He served as curate (associate pastor) in Morristown and Englewood, New Jersey. From 1917 to 1929 he was dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and from 1929 to 1941 professor at the General Theological Seminary. He retired in 1941, and died in Washington, D.C., on March 20, 1952. He contributed eight hymn texts to The Hymnal 1940, and one hymn tune, CHELSEA SQUARE. 

FOREST GREEN is named after the small English village in Surrey where Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958; see Biographies) heard a variation of the folk melody. He first used it as a hymn tune in The English Hymnal, 1906, and it appears in Oxford Book of Carols, 1928, with “Come, All You Worthy Christian Men.” Benjamin Britten arranged it in one of his song collections with the Irish words “The Star of County Down.” This tune has found a place in most modern hymnals. SDAH uses it again at No.90, “Eternal God, Whose Power Upholds.”