Hymn Expressed the Hearer’s Feelings
“That hymn expresses exactly what I have felt for years. How often I have wanted ‘A little shrine of quietness, all sacred to myself.’ How often have I wanted ‘a little shelter from life’s stress.’”
That was what a hearer said to a New Jersey minister, the Rev. Daniel Lyman Ridout, at the close of worship during which the clergyman read the words of John Oxenham, while his daughter accompanied him on the piano “with reverent insight”:
“Mid all the traffic of the ways—
Turmoils without, within—
Make in my heart a quiet place,
And come and dwell therein.”
Oxenham’s hymn expresses the desire of the soul in life’s supreme moments. This hymn was written during World War I, when the “sorrow of the human race was most acute.”
Writing under the name of John Oxenham, the author’s real name is William Arthur Dunkerley. Following his education in Victoria University, Manchester, he followed a business career. He spent some time in the United States, and also traveled extensively in Europe and Canada. “He began writing as a relief from business,” we are told. Finding that he enjoyed writing more, he “dropped business and stuck to writing.”
A most unusual note is sounded in this hymn. The heart of the mystic calls for:
“A little shrine of quietness,
All sacred to Thyself,
Where Thou shalt all my soul possess,
And I may find myself.”
In a little private chapel down in the south of England he found the little “shrine of quietness” which he coveted. Thence he would go to “sit and think,” and realize his desire for:
“A little place of mystic grace,
Of self and sin swept bare,
Where I may look upon Thy face,
And talk with Thee in prayer.”