Have you ever brought a penny to the missionary box? Emily E. S. Elliott. [Children's Mission Hymn.] First published 1855, in the Church Missionary Juvenile Instructor. Included, slightly altered, as No. 19 of the Children's Hymns in Wilson's Service of Praise, 1865, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines. In 1873, Dr. W. F. Stevenson included stanzas iii.-vi., beginning, "O how joyous is the music of the missionary song," in his Hymns for Church and Home; and this was repeated in Wilson's Songs of Zion, 1878, and in Allon's Children's Worship, 1878. In the latter it begins, "O joyous is the music." [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)