First published anonymously in the Liverpool Liturgy (1763) in five stanzas of six lines, this Christmas hymn was reprinted in Ash and Evans's Bristol Baptist collection in 1769. In later collections, it frequently appeared under the title "Arise and hail the sacred day." A popular chorus, "O then let heaven and earth rejoice," was appended to the text in several early nineteenth-century hymnals. The hymn is traditionally associated with the writer Elizabeth Scott.