Elizabeth Payson was born in Portland, Maine, on October 26, 1818. She became a schoolteacher, and married George Lewis Prentiss, a Presbyterian minister, in 1845. She wrote several articles and poems and some books. She wrote the lines of this hymn in 1856 at a time of sorrow, which culminated in the loss of her children in an epidemic. She resigned herself in her deep grief, realizing that her comfort was found in the abiding love of her Savior. One hymn that brought great consolation to her was “Nearer, My God, to Thee” (SDAH 473), and she used the same meter for the four stanzas that she wrote. She did not think it was of any great value, except to herself, and did not show it to her husband until 1869, 13 years after it was written. He thought it was worth printing; it appeared in a leaflet in that year, and then with a tune in Songs of Devotion, a collection published by W. H. Doane in 1870. The increase in love to Christ, of which each stanza speaks, suggests a progression that is implied in the words of the verse “Herein is our love made perfect” (1 John 4:17). Elizabeth Prentiss died at Dorset, Vermont, on August 13, 1878.

The tune was composed especially for these words by William Howard Doane (1832-1916;).

📖 Reference: Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White. Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1988.