For ever ours, The good and great, &c. Bp. E. H. Bickersteth. [St. James the Apostle.] Written in 1883, and published in his From Year to Year, 1883, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines. It is also in the 1890 ed. of the Hymnal Companion In the notes thereto Bp. Bickersteth says:— "This hymn is assigned to St. James's Day from the allusion in the fourth verse of the Gospel of the day, and to the lines in Keble's undying poem:—
“But for the crown that angels weave
For those next Me in glory placed,
I give it not by partial love;
But in My Father's book are writ
What names on earth shall lowliest prove,
That they in heaven may highest sit.'"
Christian Year, 1827, St. James's Day. Written Oct. 7, 1823.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)