Arabia's desert ranger
To Him shall bow the knee,
The Ethiopian stranger
His glory come to see.
* * * * * *
Kings shall fall down before Him
And gold and incense bring;
All nations shall adore Him,
His praise all people sing.
The hymn is really the seventy-second Psalm in metre, and as a version it suffers nothing by 215 / 177 comparison with that of Watts. Montgomery wrote it as a Christmas ode. It was sung Dec. 25, 1821, at a Moravian Convocation, but in 1822 he recited it at a great missionary meeting in Liverpool, and Dr. Adam Clarke was so charmed with it that he inserted it in his famous Commentary. In no long time afterwards it found its way into general use.