More Love To Thee

More Love To Thee

God often uses the weak and infirm in mighty ways.

ELIZABETH PAYSON PRENTISS was born in 1818 in Portland, Maine, where her father, Edward Payson, served as a pastor. Edward, a godly man, was frail throughout his life, and Elizabeth inherited his physical weakness. She was frequently an invalid and almost never without pain.

When Elizabeth was twenty-one, she began to realize that in spite of her Christian home she herself was not a believer. Her realization of her sin became more and more intense. Then she heard a sermon on Christ’s ability to save “unto the uttermost.” Affected deeply, she later wrote, “While listening to it my weary soul rested itself, and I thought, ‘Surely it cannot be wrong to think of the Savior, although He is not mine.’ With this conclusion I gave myself up to admire, to love and to praise Him, to wonder why I had never done so before, and to hope that all the great congregation around me were joining with me in acknowledging Him to be chief among ten thousand and the One altogether lovely.” On her way home from church she could hardly believe the peace she was experiencing, which was so unlike the negative emotions that had long troubled her soul.

In 1845 she married George L. Prentiss, a Presbyterian pastor. Six years later the family moved to New York City with their two children. Soon thereafter their son died, and the following year Elizabeth gave birth to their third child, who also died rather suddenly.

One night as the grief-stricken parents returned from visiting the graves of their children, Elizabeth’s emotions reached the breaking point. In despair she cried to her husband, “Our home is broken up, our lives wrecked, our hopes shattered, our dreams dissolved.”

Her husband’s wise counsel to her was, “But it is in times like these that God loves us all the more, just as we love our own children more when they are sick or troubled in distress.”

Elizabeth immediately took her Bible and began reading. Then she searched her hymnal for comfort. She came to “Nearer My God to Thee.” As she meditated on the words of the hymn and on the words her husband had shared with her, she began composing a poem in the same metrical pattern as “Nearer My God to Thee.”

Elizabeth went on to write many poems, publishing a volume containing 123.

Elizabeth Prentiss died on August 13, 1878, in Dorset, Vermont. The pastor of the local Congregational church conducted the funeral on the following day. In his hand he held a small well-worn volume in which Elizabeth had written down special anniversaries and memorable events with a Bible verse for each day of the year. The pastor first read the verse for August 13: “I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, ‘Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them’” (Revelation 14:13).

Then he read the verse for August 14, the day of the funeral: “For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and your labor of love, which ye have showed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints” (Hebrews 6:10, KJV).

The graveside service closed with the singing of Elizabeth’s hymn “More Love to Thee,” ending with these words:

Then shall my latest breath

Whisper Thy praise;

This be the parting cry

My heart shall raise;

This still its prayer shall be:

More love, O Christ, to Thee,

More love to Thee!

Reflection

Elizabeth Prentiss discovered that the greater her need, the greater God’s love was to her. How do you respond to Christ in love? How can you love him more?

Those who obey my commandments are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them, and I will love them. And I will reveal myself to each one of them.

John 14:21