Hymn #277: Holy, Holy, Holy | First Congregational Church

Reginald Heber (1783-1826) wrote this hymn of pure adoration to God, based on Revelation 4:8-11, for use on Trinity Sunday. This tribute to the triune God was first published in the year Heber died, 1826, and has become the most widely sung of all his hymns.

Reginald Heber showed himself to be a genius at age seven, when he translated one of Plato’s dialogues into versified English. A bishop of the Anglican Church, he did much to introduce congregational singing in the Church of England, which was previously contemptuous of that practice.

John Bacchus Dykes (1823-1876) composed the tune NICAEA in 1861 and named it for the site of the 325 C.E. Christian church council which developed the Nicene Creed. It appeared with this text in Hymns Ancient and Modern and has been described as the “archetypal Victorian hymn tune.”

Scholars have noted similarities between Dykes’s tune and several others, including the German chorale WACHET AUF, John Hopkins’s TRINITY, and a tune by Lowell Mason for the same text. None of these, however, have been identified as the true source of Dykes’s melody.