On one occasion, Prentiss wrote, “To love Christ more is the
deepest need, the constant cry of the 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!”
Elizabeth was the daughter of a clergyman, and she married a
Presbyterian clergyman, Dr. George L. Prentiss, pastor of the Mercer Street
Presbyterian Church in New York City.
Elizabeth suffered from poor health most of her life but
showed promise as a writer even as a young girl. She began submitting prose and
verse at age 16 to a popular national magazine for young people, and the
magazine published several of her submissions.
She lived the life of a near invalid, her body often wracked
with pain. It was during these times that she had to refocus her understanding
of her own value and worth from doing to being: “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.”
During her lifetime, she wrote five books, one of which
became a best-seller, Stepping Heavenward, still in print today.
“More Love to Thee, O Christ” emerged out of a time of
personal tragedy. During the 1850s, she lost a child and shortly thereafter a
second one Through her grief she confided in her diary, “Empty hands, a worn-out
exhausted body, and unutterable longings to flee from a world that has so many
sharp experiences.”
One evening when her husband and her returned from the cemetery, Elizabeth
talked about her “unutterable longs to flee from a world that has had for me so
many sharp experiences.” When she questioned the reality of the love of God,
George replied softly, “But it is in times like these that God loves us all the
more, just as we loved our own children more when they were sick or troubled or
in distress.” He encouraged his wife to return God’s love.
Inspired by Sarah Adams’ hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee,”
Prentiss began to write her own hymn in an almost identical metrical pattern. She
felt inspired by something her husband had said in a sermon: “Love can keep the
soul from going blind.” She thought that if love could do that, she needed more
love.
She had been reflecting on Jacob’s struggles in Genesis
28:10-22. Noting how God met Jacob in a special way, she prayed earnestly for a
similar experience. She found Adams’ hymn on this same theme to be of comfort.
She didn’t do anything with her poem at that time, perhaps
feeling that the solace that she received from writing it was enough. But
thirteen years later, she showed her poem to her husband, and he encouraged her
to have it printed in leaflet form, which she did. The hymn was first published
in the 1870 hymnal, “Songs of Devotion for Christian Associations.” Elizabeth
Prentiss died in 1878.
William Howard Doane wrote the music for this hymn. He was born in Connecticut in 1832. Received his education in the public schools and attended the Academy at Woodstock, where he graduated in 1848.
From his early boyhood Doane was interested in music. At the
age of six years, he sang frequently in public, and at the age of ten he sang
in the church choir. At twelve he was considered an exceptionally fine flutist.
At thirteen, he could play the double bass violin, and at fifteen, with equal
skill, he could play the cabinet organ. About this time, he began composing
music.
Doane was converted in 1847, and in 1851, he was baptized by Rev. Frederic Denison, and united with the Central Baptist Church in Norwich, Connecticut. Doane devoted himself to musical composition, and many of his tunes are as familiar as household words. The music to "Tell Me the Old, Old Story" was composed while riding in a stagecoach from Montreal to the White Mountains.
Doane has composed more than six hundred Sunday-school
songs, at least one hundred and fifty church and prayer-meeting hymns, and two
hundred and fifty other songs and ballads, beside anthems and cantatas. He
died in 1915.
Biblehub.com, The Treasury of David: The adoration is to be
humble. The “joyful noise” is to be accompanied with lowliest reverence. We are
to worship in such style that the bowing down shall indicate that we count
ourselves to be as nothing in the presence of the All-Glorious Lord . . .
Posture is not everything, yet it is something; prayer is heard when knees
cannot bend, but it is seemly that an adoring heart should show its awe by
prostrating the body and bending the knee.”
1 Peter 1:6-7
“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little
while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come
so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which
perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when
Jesus Christ is revealed.”
During Elizabeth Prentiss’ darkest hours, her husband said:
“This is our opportunity to show forth in our lives that which we have been
preaching and teaching and believing together for so many years. It is in times
like these that God loves us all the more.”
Good advice for us all. More love to Thee, O Christ!
