Ere mountains reared their forms sublime. Harriet Auber. [God eternal—Man passing away.] Appeared in her Spirit of the Psalms, 1829, in 4 stanzas of 4 lines. In the American hymnbooks it is given in its original L. M. form, as in Hedge and Huntington's Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, and several later Hymnals; and in a peculiar form to suit the music adopted in Church Pastorals, Boston, 1864. From Miss Auber and H. F. Lyte having both published works with the title The Spirit of the Psalms, this hymn has sometimes been attributed to Lyte in error.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)