At Easter in the Greek Orthodox churches, the Liturgy of St. James is sung at Communion. It is preceded by a prayer before the sacred elements are brought into the sanctuary. Gerard Moultrie translated this prayer of the fifth century from the Greek in 1864, making of it a four-stanza hymn.

Moultrie was born in Rugby, Warwickshire, on September 16, 1829. He studied at the University of Oxford, gaining a B.A. degree in 1851 and an M.A. degree in 1856. He was ordained in 1852 and was appointed chaplain and master at Shrewsbury school. He was chaplain to the Marchio- ness of Londonderry from 1855 to 1859; curate at Brightwalton for a year; and from 1860 to 1864 at Brinfield (both villages in Hertfordshire). For the next five years he was chaplain in the benefice of Barrow Gurney, Bristol, and then vicar of Southleigh, near Oxford, in 1869. He wrote several original hymns and translated many from Greek, Latin, and German, making a specialty of topics untouched by other hymnwriters. He died at Southleigh on April 25, 1885.

The melody PICARDY is a seventeenth-century French carol, possibly older. It came from the Picardy district of northern France, but is first found in print in 1860 in Chansons populaires des provinces de France (Popular Songs of French Provinces).

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