Marsden, Joshua, a Wesleyan Methodist Missionary in Nova Scotia, and afterwards in the Bermuda Islands, born in 1777, and died in 1837. He published Amusements of a Mission, N. Y., 1812, in which a poem on Missions appeared as "Go, ye messengers of God." In his Narrative of a Mission (2nd ed.), 1827, he claims this as his own.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)
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The tune is from the second chorus of Felix Mendelssohn's (PHH 279) Festgesang (Op. 68) for male voices and brass; it was first performed in 1840 at the Gutenberg Festival in Leipzig, a festival celebrating the anniversary of Gutenberg's invention of the printing press. Mendelssohn's tune is similar…
Display Title: Go, Ye Messengers of GodFirst Line: Go, ye messengers of GodTune Title: CULFORDAuthor: Joshua MarsdenMeter: 77.77 DSource: Amusements of a Mission (New York: 1812)