Elizabeth Cecilia Douglas Clephane, daughter of the sheriff of Fife, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on June 18, 1830. When her father died, she and her two older sisters moved ultimately to Melrose, about 35 miles southeast of Edinburgh in the country made famous by the novels of Sir Walter Scott. They lived in Bridgend House, which, as its name suggests, was very near to the river Tweed. She had been asked to write a poem for a children’s magazine and was sitting in her room, seeking inspiration. Looking out of the window and seeing the bridge, in her imagination she visualized the monks of the nearby old abbey, passing over the bridge in bygone days. She saw a constant procession of these men, now dead and gone, and had a premonition that she too would soon depart this life. Her mind was full of her own experience, with the hopes and longings of a young Christian, and she decided that the topic of her poem should be the way of the cross of Christ. So the heading of her poem was Proverbs 14:26, “His children shall have a place of refuge.” The poem appeared posthumously in 1872 in Family Treasury, under the general tile of Breathings on the Border. Seven more of her poems appeared in other issues of this magazine. Clephane’s premonition unfortunately was fulfilled when she died at age 38, February 19, 1869, but her works live on. 

ST. CHRISTOPHER, named after the patron saint of travelers, was composes expressly for these words by Frederick Charles Maker in 1881. Maker was born in 1844 in Bristol, was a chorister at the cathedral there, an organist at the Methodist Free Church, at a Congregational church, and then for 28 years, until 1910, at another Congregational church, all in Bristol. He died in Bristol on January 1, 1927. He was a visiting professor of music at Clifton College, and composed hymn tunes, anthems, cantatas, and piano pieces. His other tunes in SDAH are No. 481, REST, or ELTON, or WHITTIER, and No. 588, MELROSE.