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How Sorrow Was Changed Into Sympathy, Words of Cheer for Mothers Bereft of Little Children, Ed. by G.L. Prentiss 

I told Him how my feet had slipped, How often gone astray; How oft my heart refused to love, My lips refused to pray. In stammering words that none but He Hearing could understand, I made complaint of careless work Done by a careless hand.

Of wasted hours, of idle words, Of love oft waxing dim, Of silence when a warmer heart Had testified of Him. I owned my weak and selfish ways; How often all day long, Moanings and sighs had filled His ears To whom I owed a song. And what said He? What whispered words Responded unto mine? Did He reproach me? Did His love On me refuse to shine?

Nay, thus He spoke, and bent Him low To reach my anxious ear, My child, thou doest well to lie As thou art lying here ; I knew thy human weakness, knew Each lurking bosom sin, Knew it, and yet in loving grace Thy heart I stooped to win.

I knew that thou wouldst often fall, Poor work for Me wouldst do, Wouldst give Me only half thy love, Give praises faint and few. And yet I choose thee. Be content And since thou canst not fly To heights by dearer souls attained, Let it suffice to lie

Here at My feet; it is the place To which My loved ones flee; They find it sweet, and so shalt thou; ‘Tis a safe place for thee. Yes, it is sweet, and it is safe! And here will I abide; Sinful, and yet forgiven, sad, And yet so satisfied.

Author --Elizabeth P. Prentiss, 1818-1878

“And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; that ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ.” Philippians 1:9, 10

Mrs. Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, born in Portland, Maine, on October 26, 1818, was known throughout her life as a saintly woman, who continually practiced the presence of Christ. Those who knew her best described her as “a very, bright-eyed, little woman, with a keen sense of humor, who cared more to shine in her own happy household than in a wide circle of society. " Though Elizabeth was strong in spirit, she was frail in body. Throughout her life she was a near invalid, scarcely knowing a moment free of pain. She once wrote these words:

“I see now that to live for God, whether one is allowed ability to be actively useful or not, is a great thing, and that it is a wonderful mercy to be allowed even to suffer, if thereby one can glorify Him.”

On another occasion she wrote:

“To love Christ more is the deepest need, the constant cry of my soul … out in the woods, and on my bed, and out driving, when I am happy and busy, and when I am sad and idle, the whisper keeps going up for more love, more love, more love!”

Early in life, Elizabeth demonstrated a gift for writing both prose and poetry. At the age of sixteen, she became a contributor to the Youth’s Companion, a magazine of high spiritual and literary standards. After a period of teaching school in Massachusetts and Virginia, in 1845, she married Dr. George L. Prentiss, a Presbyterian minister, who later became a professor of Homiletics and Polity at Union Theological Seminary. Mrs. Prentiss continued to write and publish her literary works, and one of her books, Stepping Heavenward, sold over 200,000 copies in the United States alone.

“More Love to Thee” was written by Mrs. Prentiss during a time of great personal sorrow. While ministering to a church in New York City during the 1850’s, the Prentiss’ lost a child, and then a short time later their youngest child also died. For weeks, Elizabeth was inconsolable, and in her diary she wrote, “Empty hands, a worn-out, exhausted body, and unutterable longings to flee from a world that has so many sharp experiences.” From her broken heart came this touching poem:

I thought that prattling boys and girls Would fill this empty room; That my rich heart would gather flowers From childhood’s opening bloom: One child and two green graves are mine, This is God’s gift to me; A bleeding, fainting, broken heart, This is my gift to Thee.”

During this period of grief, Mrs. Prentiss began meditating upon the story of Jacob in the Old Testament, and how God met him in a very special way during his moments of sorrow and deepest need. She prayed earnestly that she too might have a similar experience. She also thought about Sarah Adams’ hymn text, “Nearer, My God, to Thee” (See 101 Hymn Stories, No. 61). While she thus meditated and prayed, she began writing her own lines in almost the same metrical pattern that Sarah Adams had used in writing her poetic version of Jacob at Bethel. Mrs. Prentiss completed all four stanzas that same evening; but evidently she did not think very highly of her work, for she never showed the poem to anyone, not even her husband, for the next thirteen years. The poem was first printed in leaflet form, in 1869, and later appeared in the hymnal, Songs of Devotion. This hymn has since been translated into many languages, including Arabic and Chinese, indicating that it is a universal response from sincere believers around the world. Mrs. Elizabeth Prentiss died on August 13, 1878, at her summer home in Dorset, Vermont.

The composer of the music, William Howard Doane, was a successful businessman who wrote more than 2,000 gospel song tunes, but always as an avocation. He was Fanny Crosby’s principal collaborator in writing gospel music, contributing music for such well-known hymn texts as: “Rescue the Perishing,” (101 Hymn Stories, No. 76), “Pass Me Not,” “I Am Thine, O Lord,” “Near the Cross,” “To God Be the Glory,” and also the music for Lydia Baxter’s hymn text, “Take the Name of Jesus With You” (No. 84). Mr. Doane left a fortune in trust, which has been used in many philanthropic causes, including the construction of Doane Memorial Music Building at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.

William H. Doane composed this music especially for Mrs. Prentiss’ text and included it in his hymnal, Songs of Devotion, published in 1870.

“We are not to make the ideas of contentment and aspiration quarrel, for God made them fast friends … A man may aspire, and yet be quite content until it is time to rise; and both flying and resting are but parts of one contentment. The very fruit of the gospel is aspiration. It is to the heart what spring is to the earth, making every root, and bud, and bough desire to be more.” –Henry Ward Beecher

“Gracious Spirit, Holy Ghost, Taught by Thee, we covet most, Of Thy gifts at Pentecost, Holy, heavenly love.

“Love is kind, and suffers long, Love is meek, and thinks no wrong, Love than death itself more strong; Therefore give us love.

“Faith and hope and love we see, Joining hand in hand, agree; But the greatest of the three, And the best, is love.” –Christopher Wordsworth

There is certainly enough in our Savior, if we only open our eyes that we may see it, to solve every doubt and satisfy every longing of the heart; and He is willing to give it in full measure. If a glimpse of our Savior here on earth can be so refreshing, so delightful, what will it be in Heaven?

When my mind strives to grasp this love of Christ, it seems to struggle in vain with its own littleness, and falls back weary and exhausted, to wonder again at the heights and depths which surpass its comprehension.

In proportion to your devotion to the Savior will be the blessedness of your life.

I am persuaded that real humility dwells deep within the heart, and that it is only to be gained by communion with our blessed Savior, who, when He was reviled, reviled not again.

The greatest saint on earth has got to reach Heaven on the same terms as the greatest sinner; unworthy, unfit, good-for-nothing; but saved through grace.

In proportion to our love to Christ, will be the agony of terror lest we should sin and fall, and so grieve and weary Him.

One minute of nearness to the Lord Jesus contains more delight than years spent in communion with any earthly friend.

If the loss of your earthly fortune gains Christ for you, it will be a beautiful loss.

The more we love Him, the more we see how sinful sin is, and the more sorry we are to have been guilty of it.

I entreat you to turn your eyes away from self, from man, and look to Christ.

Let us never allow anything to come between our hearts and our God.

It is sweet to be in the sunshine of the Master’s smile, but I believe our souls need winter as well as summer, night as well as day.

The Safe Place. I went to Jesus with a prayer Upon a suppliant’s knee; Low at His cross I laid me down, Nor asked His face to see, Yet whispered in His ear the tale No mortal ear could bear: The story of a faithless heart, And of its self-despair.

I told Him how my feet had slipped, How often gone astray; How oft my heart refused to love, My lips refused to pray. In stammering words that none but He Hearing could understand, I made complaint of careless work Done by a careless hand.

Of wasted hours, of idle words, Of love oft waxing dim, Of silence when a warmer heart Had testified of Him. I owned my weak and selfish ways; How often all day long, Moanings and sighs had filled His ears To whom I owed a song. And what said He? What whispered words Responded unto mine? Did He reproach me? Did His love On me refuse to shine?

Nay, thus He spoke, and bent Him low To reach my anxious ear, My child, thou doest well to lie As thou art lying here ; I knew thy human weakness, knew Each lurking bosom sin, Knew it, and yet in loving grace Thy heart I stooped to win.

I knew that thou wouldst often fall, Poor work for Me wouldst do, Wouldst give Me only half thy love, Give praises faint and few. And yet I choose thee. Be content And since thou canst not fly To heights by dearer souls attained, Let it suffice to lie

Here at My feet; it is the place To which My loved ones flee; They find it sweet, and so shalt thou; ‘Tis a safe place for thee. Yes, it is sweet, and it is safe! And here will I abide; Sinful, and yet forgiven, sad, And yet so satisfied.

Let us take our lot in life just as it comes, courageously, patiently, and faithfully, never wondering at anything the Master does.

I have lived to see that God never was so good to me as when He seemed most severe.

God never places us in any position in which we cannot grow. We may imagine that He does. We may fear we are so impeded by fretting petty cares that we are gaining nothing; but when we are not  sending any branches upward, we may be sending roots downward. Perhaps in the time of our humiliation, when everything seems a failure, we are making the best kind of progress. Look on and look up. Lay hold on Christ with both your poor, empty hands. Let Him do with you what seems good to Him. Though He slay you, still trust in Him, and I dare in His name to promise you a sweeter, better life than you could have ever known, had He left you to drink of the full dangerous cups of unmingled prosperity.

O if the unseen presence of Jesus can make the heart to sing for joy in the midst of its sorrow and sin here, what will it be to dwell with Him forever! We never know, or begin to know, the great Heart that loves us best, until we throw ourselves upon it in the hour of our despair. Friends say and do all they can for us, but they do not know what we suffer or what we need; but Christ who formed, has penetrated the depths of the crushed heart. He pours in the oil that no human hand possesses, and “as one whom his mother comforts, so will He comfort you.”

Lay down this principle as a law– God does nothing arbitrary. If He takes away your health, for instance, it is because He has some reason for doing so. This is true of everything you value, and if you have real faith in Him, you will not insist on knowing this reason.

What are trials, but angels to beckon us nearer to Him.

What does it matter, after all, from what point of time or space, we go to our eternal home. O how we shall smile after we get there, that we ever gave it one moment’s thought.

All your tears will soon be wiped away. You will see the King in His beauty. You will see Christ your Redeemer, and realize all He is, and all He has done for you. As I think of these things my soul is in haste to be gone. I long to be set free from sin and self, and to go to the fellowship of those who are done with them forever, and are perfect and entire, lacking nothing.

She is at home; she is well, she is happy, she will never know a bereavement or a day’s illness, or the infirmities and trials of old age. She has the secret of perpetual youth! The only real comfort is that God never makes mistakes, and that He would not have snatched her from us if He had not had a reason that would satisfy us if we knew it.  Next to dying and going home one’s self, it must be sweet to accompany a Christian friend down to the very banks of the river. Isn’t it strange that after such experiences we can ever again have a worldly thought, or ever lose the sense of the reality of divine things!

God delights to try our faith by the conditions in which He places us.

Dying grace is not usually given until it is needed. Death, to the disciple of Jesus, is only stepping from one room to another and far better room of our Father’s house. And how little all the sorrows of the way will seem to us, when we get to our home above.

You never will be really happy until Christ becomes your dearest and most intimate friend.

Seek God, not joy.

How transcendently good He is, when He brings me down to that low place, and there shows me that that self-renouncing, self-despairing spot is just the one where He will stoop to meet me.

Those words, “daily nearer God,” have an inexpressible charm for me. I long for such nearness to Him that all other objects shall fade into comparative insignificance; so that to have a thought, a wish, a pleasure apart from Him, shall be impossible.

I am not sure that it is best for us, once safe and secure on the Rock of Ages, to ask ourselves too closely, what this and that experience may signify. Is it not better to be thinking of the Rock, not of the feet that stand upon it? It seems to me that we ought to be unconscious of ourselves, and that the nearer we get to Christ the more we shall be taken up with Him. We shall be like a sick man who, after he gets well, forgets all the symptoms he used to think so much of, and stops feeling his pulse, and just enjoys his health, only pointing out his physician to all who are diseased.

REST! What an infinite, mournful sweetness in the word. How perfectly sure I feel that my soul can never rest in itself, nor in anything of earth. If I find peace, it must be in the bosom of God.  I know myself to be perfectly helpless. I cannot promise to do, or to be, anything; but I do want to put everything else aside, and to devote myself entirely to the service of Christ.

The thorny path bears some of the sweetest flowers that adorn life. And when with naked, bleeding feet we walk upon a flinty soil, we often find diamonds. A cup of cold water given in Christ’s name, if that is all one can give, is just as acceptable as the richest offering; and so is a teaspoonful, if one has no more to give. Christ loves to be loved, and the smallest testimony of real love is most pleasing to Him, and love shown to one of His suffering disciples, He regards as love to Himself. So a little child carrying a flower to some poor invalid, may thus do Christ honor and become more endeared to Him.

Let my life be an all-day looking to Jesus. Let my love to God be so deep, earnest, and all-pervading, that I cannot have even the passing emotion of rebellion to suppress. There is such a thing as an implicit faith in, and consequent submission to, Christ. Let me never rest until they are freely mine. I believe that there is no happiness on earth, as there is none in heaven, to be compared with that of losing all things to possess Christ.

There may come a period when God says, virtually, to the soul, “You clung to Me when I smiled upon and caressed you. Let Me see how you will behave when I smile and speak comfortably no more.”

It matters very little on what paths we are walking, since we find Him in every one.

I have seen the time when I could hide myself in Him as a little child hides in its mother’s arms, and so have thousands of aching hearts.

Let us take our lot in life just as it comes, courageously, patiently, and faithfully, never wondering at anything the Master does.

We love God more than we are aware; when He slays us, we trust in Him; when He strikes us, we kiss His hand.

The longer I live the more conscious I am of human frailty, and of the constant, overwhelming need I have of God’s grace.