This hymn of seven stanzas was first published by John Brownlie in 1907 in Hymns From the East, a collection of translations of Greek hymns, although no original of this one has been located, and it may be an original from the author himself. 

John Brownlie was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on August 3 or 6, 1857 some say 1859). He studied at the university there and also at the Free Church College. He was granted his license to preach in 1884; in 1885 he became assistant minister of the Free Church in Portpatrick, Wigtownshire, now Dumfries-Galloway. On the death of his superior in 1890, he took full charge of the church there. He tool great interest in education locally and in larger town of Stranraer, 10 miles across the peninsula. His greatest work was the translation on many Latin and Greek hymns, the latter being a largely unworked field except for John Manson Neale’s efforts. His publications include Hymns of Our Pilgrimage, 1889; Zionward, 1890 Pilgrim Songs, 1892; Hymns and Hymn Writers of the Church Hymnary, 1899; Hymns of the Early Church, 1896 Hymns form East and West, 1898; Hymns of the Greek Church, 1900; and others. Brownlie died at Crieff in Perthshire, on November 18, 1925.

MORNING SONG, also called CONSOLATION, first appeared in John Wyeth’s Repository of Sacred Music, 1813, set to hymn by Isaac Watts. It is also used for SDAH 576, “Awake, Awake to Love and Work.”

John Wyeth was born on Cambridge, Massachusetts, on March 31, 1770; he became a printer and publisher in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He published his first Repository of Sacred music in 1810, which collected standard psalm tunes, for which there was a great demand at that time at camp meetings and revival meetings in Pennsylvania. Wyeth, a Unitarian, was not a musician, but his two volumes had enormous sales among other fellowships. He died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on January 23, 1858.