“Come, Thou Glorious Day of Promise,” first borrowed by the Latter-day Saints in 1840, attained a permanent place in Latter-day Saint hymnody with its inclusion in the 1851 edition of Sacred Hymns and Spiritual Songs. No author name was given for these words until 1905, when authorship was wrongly attributed to Alexander Neibaur (1808-1883), the first Jewish convert to the Church. Neibaur remained credited in the Latter-day Saint hymnal as author of “Come, Thou Glorious Day of Promise” for the next eighty years, an error that was corrected only after the 1985 hymnal had gone to press.
At least twenty-four years before the 1985 hymnal was published, however, this mistake was discovered by Helen Hanks Macaré, a graduate student at UCLA. In her 1961 doctrinal dissertation “The Singing Saints: A Study of the Mormon Hymnal, 1835-1950,” Macaré points out that when “Come thou glorious day of promise” was published in the Millennial Star in 1840, a note preceding the text clearly indicated that Neibaur was not its author: “The following Hymn was composed by a Jew, and was sent to us for publication, by Br. Neibaur, of Preston, who is himself a Jew.” (Macaré,253.) She also notes that an altered version of this text, “May the glorious day of promise,” appeared in Lowell Mason and David Greene’s Church Psalmody (1831), with the notation that it came from “Pratt’s Collection.”
Macaré’s research escaped notice of the General Music Committee, and when the 1985 hymnal went to press, “Come, Thou Glorious Day of Promise,” was still credited to Neibaur. This was evidently brought to the attention of the hymnal editors shortly afterward, for in subsequent printings Neibaur’s name was removed, and authorship of the text was changed to read: “From Pratt’s Collection, ca. 1830, alt.” This is still the designation in the most recent printings of the hymnal.
Recent scholarship, however, indicates this text dates back as far as 1816, and possibly earlier. “Come, Thou Glorious Day of Promise” was appended to a letter published in the January 1816 edition of the Jewish Expositor and Friend of Israel. The letter is dated November 20, 1815.
This hymn can also be found in A Collection of Psalms and Hymns from Various Authors for the use of Serious and Devout Christians, published at Colchester, England.
This hymnal is apparently a reprint of Richard Conyer’s collection of the same name, but published exclusively for the congregation at St. Peter’s Church in Colchester. “Come thou glorious day of promise” does not appear in any of the first seven editions of Conyer’s hymnbook, published between 1767 and 1798, and is not found in the eleventh edition, published in 1824. The eight, ninth, and tenth editions have not yet been found, so it is impossible to say if it was included in any of these collections. It is likely, however, that “Come thou glorious day of promise” was exclusive to the editions printed at Colchester, as it is also in the 1822 edition published in this location. The preface to the 1816 Colchester collection indicates this book was introduced to the congregation there many years earlier by the late Rev. Robert Storry. The preface states: “The distance from the place where it was originally printed frequently rendered it difficult to obtain a supply for the demand, and the last edition being out of print…The present edition has therefore been re-printed from the original one, and contains several Hymns which have been omitted in the later copies, as well as a few additional ones.” It is likely that “Come thou glorious day of promise,” the very last hymn in this 1816 collection, is one of the newly appended hymns.
Much research is still needed to determine the author or source of this hymn text. In any case, this new evidence suggests that “Come, Thou Glorious Day of Promise,” as found in the current Latter-day Saint hymnal, is not an altered text; “May the glorious Day of Promise,” not found earlier than 1829, was likely altered from the original “Come, Thou Glorious Day of Promise,” and not the other way around.
Notes:
*The book referred to as “Pratt’s Collection” is Josiah Pratt’s Three Hundred and Fifty Portions of the Book of Psalms (London, 1829). See John Julian, A Dictionary of Hymnology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1892), 334-35. Julian notes that Pratt’s collection was extremely influential on American hymn books published between 1830 and 1840. “May the Glorious Day of Promise” is found among the adapted hymns in Pratt’s book (Hymn no. 351), printed in three stanzas with the title “Prayer for the Jews.”
*The Rev. Robert Storry died January 18, 1814 (see Christian Observer, August 1814, 540-544.)
Sources:
“Poetry,” Millennial Star, December 1840, 216; Helen Hanks Macaré, “The Singing Saints: A Study of the Mormon Hymnal, 1835-1950,” (PhD. Diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1961), 253; Jewish Expositor and Friend of Israel, January 1816, 38; A Collection of Psalms and Hymns from Various Authors for the use of Serious and Devout Christians, new ed., rev. and amended (Colchester, England: Rose and Chaplin, 1816), 253; A Collection of Psalms and Hymns from Various Authors for the use of Serious and Devout Christians, new ed., rev. and amended (Colchester, England: J. Chaplin, 1822), 261-262.
Latter-day Saint Hymnology 