Awake, awake the sacred song. Anne Steele. [Christmas.] First published in her Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional (1760, volume i, page 85) in 6 stanzas of 4 lines under the title "The Incarnate Saviour." The hymn was reprinted in the 1780 posthumous edition of her poems and in Daniel Sedgwick's definitive collection of her Hymns in 1859.
The hymn was introduced into common public worship when Caleb Evans and John Ash selected it for their influential Baptist compilation, the Bristol Collection (1769, No. 88). Through the Bristol Collection, it gained currency among Nonconformist congregations in England and eventually made its way across the Atlantic. It has enjoyed sustained use in American hymnals, appearing in major collections such as Edwin F. Hatfield's Church Hymn Book (1872, omitting stanza vi), the Baptist Praise Book (1871, omitting stanza iv), and Charles S. Robinson's Songs for the Sanctuary (1865, also omitting stanza iv). The hymn celebrates the mystery of the Incarnation and the angelic praise surrounding the birth of Christ.
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