Far from these narrow scenes of night. Anne Steele. [Heaven.] This hymn ranks in popularity as one of the first of Miss Steele's hymns. It was first pub. in her Poems on Subjects chiefly Devotional, 1760, vol. i. p. 157, in 11 stanzas of 4 lines, and entitled "The Promised Land." It was repeated in her Poems, &c, 1780, and in D. Sedgwick's edition of her Hymns, 1863, p. 96. In modern hymn-books it is found in various forms, ranging from 4 stanzas in the American Baptist Hymn [& Tune) Book, 1871, to 8 stanzas in the Westminster Abbey Hymn Book, 1883. It was brought into use in an abbreviated form in the Church of England through R. Conyers's Collection, 1767, and A. M. Toplady's Psalms & Hymns, 1776; and amongst Nonconformists by the Bristol Baptist Collection of Ash & Evans, 1769. In most American Unitarian collections a selection of stanzas rearranged from CM. to SM. is given, sometimes in 7 stanzas, as in Dabney's Selection of Hymns & Psalms, Andover, 1821; and again, in 5 stanzas, as in the Hymns [& Tune] Book for the Church & Home, &c, Boston, 1868.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
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