Revive Us Again Lyrics William P. Mackay, 1863

William Paton Mackay, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, wrote Revive Us Again. The words first appeared unsigned in William Reid's Praise of Jesus, published in London by James Nisbet in 1863, as nine couplets in two parts with a refrain. James Mearns's Dictionary of Hymnology of 1907 says the text was recast in 1867. The revised version, in ten couplets, was printed in Reid's The Praise Book in 1872.

Mackay wrote the tune too, called HALLELUJAH. Reid's The Praise-Book of 1866 credits it to Mackay and calls it the text's own melody. Many American hymnals, including Baptist Hymnal 1991, credit John J. Husband instead. The Hymnology Archive says Husband's known tunes do not include it, and that his name first appears with it in Robert Lowry's Chautauqua Carols in 1878.

Moody and Sankey included the hymn in Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs in 1875, dating the text 1866. The Hymnology Archive describes a call-and-answer way of singing the refrain that has been used at Billy Graham crusades, with one side of the room answering the other. Baptist Hymnal 1991 prints the hymn in G major and lists Habakkuk 3:2. Hymnary gives Mackay's dates as 1839 to 1885 in one hymnal and 1837 to 1885 in another.