• “I would rather be a widow than be married to a coward.” – Sabina Wurmbrand

Anne Steele (1716-1778)

“Anne was the daugh­ter of William Steele, a tim­ber mer­chant who was al­so a lay preach­er at the Bap­tist church in Broughton [England]. She lost her mo­ther at age 3. At age 19, a se­vere hip in­jury made her a life­long in­val­id. At age 21, her fi­an­cé drowned the day be­fore they were to be mar­ried. From this ser­ies of tra­ge­dies rose 144 hymns and 34 ver­si­fied Psalms, which were enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar. Her main work was Po­ems on Sub­jects Chief­ly De­vo­tion­al (1760). When Trin­i­ty Church in Bos­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts (where Phil­lips Brooks la­ter be­came rec­tor) pub­lished its hym­nal in 1808, 59 of its 144 hymns were from the pen of Anne Steele. She pre­ferred to re­main anon­y­mous, though, writ­ing under a pen name. Her tomb­stone car­ried the follow­ing words:

Silent the lyre, and dumb the tuneful tongue,
That sung on earth her great Redeemer’s praise;
But now in Heaven she joins the angelic song,
In more harmonious, more exalted lays.”

(From cyberhymnal.org)

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  • “If we do not want those veils, He will clear them away. He has given us power of our wills. If the will be set towards beholding, looking, reflecting, then our Lord will see to the veils.” – Amy Carmichael

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For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. — 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NKJV)

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