According to Thy gracious word

James Montgomery wrote the highly regarded Communion hymn "According to Thy gracious word" as a poetic setting for the Eucharistic command. No original manuscript copy of this text is preserved within the collection of the Montgomery Manuscripts. The hymn was first published on page 405 of the author's collection, The Christian Psalmist, in 1825. In this initial appearance, the work was structured in 6 stanzas of 4 lines each and was prefaced with the scriptural motto, "This do in remembrance of Me."

The piece quickly secured a position as one of the most popular English hymns for Holy Communion, appearing across a wide variety of moderate church collections.

As it was adopted into different denominational books, the second line of the second stanza underwent frequent editorial revision. Montgomery's original phrase, "Thy testamental cup I take," was often modified to read "The cup, Thy precious Blood, I take" in collections like Thomas Vowles Baring's Hymns for Public and Private Worship. Other popular hymnals, including the Salisbury Hymn Book (1857) and Benjamin Hall Kennedy’s Hymnologia Christiana (1863), adjusted the line to read "The cup, Thy precious Blood, I'll take."

Montgomery later reprinted the text without changes as entry Number 129 in his volume Original Hymns in 1853. In keeping with the author's general structural habits, the original composition contained no closing doxology. To fill this liturgical need, later compilers frequently appended a trinitarian stanza beginning "To Thee, O Jesus, Light of Light, / All praise and glory be," an addition extracted directly from the 1857 Salisbury Hymn Book.

The hymn was also significantly altered for transatlantic use. In the United States, Frederic Henry Hedge and Frederic Dan Huntington included a reconfigured version in their Unitarian collection, Hymns of the Church (Boston, 1853). Registered as entry Number 388, this variant was given the new title "Gethsemane, can I forget?" and was constructed by rearranging the third, second, fourth, and fifth stanzas of Montgomery's original text.