Peace and truth its course portends.
4
Watchman, will its beams alone
Gild the spot that gave them birth?
(Antistrophe)
Trav'ler, ages are its own.
See! it bursts o'er all the earth.
“YE CHRISTIAN HERALDS, GO PROCLAIM.”
In some versions “Ye Christian heroes,” etc.
Professor David R. Breed attributes this stirring hymn to Mrs. Vokes (or Voke) an English or Welsh lady, who is supposed to have written it somewhere near 1780, and supports the claim by its date of publication in Missionary and Devotional Hymns at Portsea, Wales, in 1797. In this Dr. Breed follows (he says) “the accepted tradition.” On the other hand the Coronation Hymnal (1894) refers the authorship to a Baptist minister, the Rev. Bourne Hall Draper, of Southampton (Eng.), born 1775, and this choice has the approval of Dr. Charles Robinson. The question occurs whether, when the hymn was published in good faith as Mrs. Vokes', it was really the work of a then unknown youth of twenty-two.