Long on England’s shores may shine;
Grant that people, Church, and throne
May in all good deeds be one.[182]
Of the eighteenth century, Miss Steele and Mrs. Barbauld are almost the only women whose hymns survive to-day. In the nineteenth century, however, there are not a few women whose songs are likely to endure. Charlotte Elliott, Cecil Frances Alexander, Anna Lætitia Waring, have written immortal hymns, and it will be long ere Frances Ridley Havergal is absent from the songs of the Church. It is safe to prophesy that ‘Just as I am,’ ‘There is a green hill far away,’ and ‘Father, I know that all my life,’ will be sung through many generations—as long, indeed, as English Christianity endures.
Charlotte Elliott (1791-1871), who belonged to a famous evangelical Church family, is one of many who learnt in suffering what she taught in song. Her greatest hymn, ‘Just as I am,’ was first published in the Invalid’s Hymn-book (1836), and, without her knowledge, was reprinted and widely circulated. In no other hymn has the sinner’s way to the Saviour been made more plain. Through the penitential self-despair of its earlier verses countless numbers of the weary and heavy-laden have found rest unto their souls, and entered into the joyous confidence of its closing lines. Wordsworth’s daughter, Dora, received the hymn in her last illness, and her husband wrote to the authoress, ‘At least ten times that day she asked me to repeat it to her,’ and every morning she asked for it again till the end came. After her death it formed part of her mother’s ‘daily solitary prayer.’
Miss Elliott is the truest and the best representative of the early evangelical Church hymn-writers. Many of her little-known hymns are very beautiful. I quote two pieces, notwithstanding a breath of Calvinism in them both, for it is a Calvinism that has good Scripture warrant.
‘My soul followeth hard after Thee’ (Ps. lxiii. 8).
I look to Thee, I hope in Thee,
I glory in Thy name!
I make Thy righteousness my plea,