Albert Frederick Bayly (1901-1984; see Biographies) found great during the period from December 1947 to December 1949 he wrote a paraphrase in verse from each of the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi. They were included in his booklet Rejoice, O People, published in 1950. This particular hymn takes the most outstanding verses from the prophet Micah and applies his words from the ancient past to the practical issues of modern times, indeed to January 1949, when the hymn was written. It originally had five stanzas. One slight change has been made in the last stanza, which began “How shall my soul fulfil,” and in the second stanza, whose first line ends “should you not justice know?”

In 1950 Bayly asked Erik Routley (1917-1982; see SDAH 13) to set hymn to the tune TYES CROSS. However, when the supplement to Hymns some of his hymns, including this one, to music. Routley did so, and set this Ancient and Modern came to be written, titled 100 Hymns for Today, 1969, one of the editors, Sir John Dykes Bower, wrote to Routley saying that he wanted to use both words and music, but that TYES CROSS had one phrase in it that S very much like a phrase in the tune LOVE UNKNOWN (see SDAH 188). He asked Routley if he could adjust the tune; the latter complied willingly and produced the present tune SHARPTHORNE, which he said was “a sort of paraphrase in the minor key” of TYES CROSS. Tyes Cross and Sharpthorne are neighboring hamlets in the county of Sussex, not far from where Routley spent his early childhood.

Notice the different chord that completes stanzas 1 and 2, which means that the melody ends on the tonic, but in major. Routley also wrote SDAH 13, “New Songs of Celebration Render,” and SDAH 356, “All Who Love and Serve Your City.”

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