“JUST AS I AM, WITHOUT ONE PLEA.”
Charlotte Elliott, of Brighton, Eng., would have been well-known through her admired and useful hymns,—
My God, my Father, while I stray,
My God, is any hour so sweet,
With tearful eyes I look around,
—and many others. But in “Just as I am” she made herself a voice in the soul of every hesitating penitent. The currency of the hymn has been too swift for its authorship and history to keep up with, but it is a blessed law of influence that good works out-run biographies. This master-piece of metrical gospel might be called Miss Elliott's spiritual-birth hymn, for a reply of Dr. Cæsar Malan of Geneva was its prompting cause. The young lady was a stranger to personal religion when, one day, the good man, while staying at her father's house, in his gentle way introduced the subject. She resented it, but afterwards, stricken in spirit by his words, came to him with apologies and an inquiry that confessed a new concern of mind. “You speak of coming to Jesus, but how? I'm not fit to come.”
“Come just as you are,” said Dr. Malan.
The hymn tells the result.
Like all the other hymns bound up in her Invalid's Hymn-book, it was poured from out the heart of one who, as the phrase is, “never knew a 257 / 215 well day”—though she lived to see her eighty-second year.
Illustrative of the way it appeals to the afflicted, a little anecdote was told by the eloquent John B. Gough of his accidental seat-mate in a city church service. A man of strange appearance was led by the kind usher or sexton to the pew he occupied. Mr. Gough eyed him with strong aversion. The man's face was mottled, his limbs and mouth twitched, and he mumbled singular sounds. When the congregation sang he attempted to sing, but made fearful work of it. During the organ interlude he leaned toward Mr. Gough and asked how the next verse began. It was—
Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind.
“That's it,” sobbed the strange man, “I'm blind—God help me!”—and the tears ran down his face—“and I'm wretched—and paralytic,” and then he tried hard to sing the line with the rest.
“After that,” said Mr. Gough, “the poor paralytic's singing was as sweet to me as a Beethoven symphony.”
Charlotte Elliott was born March 18, 1789, and died in Brighton, Sept. 22, 1871. She stands in the front rank of female hymn-writers.
The tune of “Woodworth,” by William B. Bradbury, has mostly superseded Mason's “Elliott,” and is now the accepted music of this lyric of perfect faith and pious surrender.
Just as I am,—Thy love unknown
Hath broken every barrier down,
Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.