Ancient of Days

About this sermon

Jim McClarty: Back in the early 1990's I was a partner in a 16 track recording studio. When I had time, I used to like to record songs that I'd written and songs that I'd come to love. This is one of those hymns that I fell in love with when I read the words and listened to the majestic melody. The arrangement is straight out of the hymn book, although I did have to shift some octaves in order to sing all of the parts. Here's a bit of history about this grand old hymn of the faith: "...And the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow..." (Dan. 7.9) "Ancient of Days" expresses praise to God. The text was written by William Croswell Doane, who was born on Mar. 2, 1832, in Boston, MA, the son of an Episcopal bishop, George Washington Doane, himself a hymnwriter whose works include "Softly Now the Light of Day," "Fling Out the Banner," and "Thou Art the Way," and his wife Elize Greene Callahan Doane. "Ancient of Days" was produced in 1886 for the bicentenary of the granting of the city charter to Albany, NY, the first city to receive such an instrument in what is now the United States -- so much for the separation of church and state. The tune was composed at Doane's request by the music director of the church, John Albert Jeffery (1855-1929). The song was first sung that same year in the Episcopal All Saints Cathedral there. The text was altered by the author for its first publication in the new 1892 Episcopal Church Hymnal, of which Doane was commission chairman, and the tune was first printed with it in the 1984 music edition to the Church Hymnal. In 1902, Doane published Mosaics, or the Harmony of a Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the Sundays of the Christian Year and Rhymes from Time to Time, and served as Chancellor of the University of the State of New York from 1902 until 1909. He died at Albany on May 17, 1913.