Joseph Medlicott Scriven wrote these words, titled “Pray Without Ceasing,” for his mother in Ireland, with the express intention of bringing comfort to her at a time of sorrow. They were written in 1855 at Port Hope, Ontario, Canada, and never intended to be a hymn, but they were included in Horace L. Hastings’ Social Hymns, Original and Selected, 1865, credited to “Anon.” It was not generally known in his neighborhood that he was the author of the words. When questioned about it, he replied, “The Lord and I did it between us.”

Scriven was born on September 10, 1819, at Seapatrick, County Down, Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, but he left and joined the army. However, poor health caused him to give up this career, so he returned to the university and graduated with a B.A. Unfortunately, his anticipated bride was thrown from her horse into a river and drowned just before the wedding, and he decided to begin a new life in Canada in 1844. He became a teacher and joined the Plymouth Brethren. For the second time, when he was to be married, his fiancée died, this time from pneumonia after being baptized in an icy lake.

Although he suffered financial loss and was subject to fits of deep depression, he was known in the township of Bewdley, near Port Hope, as a committed Christian who was always ready to help the poor widows, sick persons, and handicapped people by seeing that they had a good supply of sawed wood for their fires. One cold morning, October 10, 1886, his body was found in Rice Lake, Bewdly, Ontario. It was never determined whether this fatality was an accident or a suicide.

CONVERSE commemorates the composer Charles Crozat Converse, who was born on October 7, 1832, at Warren, Massachusetts. He wrote the tune in 1868 and published the hymn in his Silver Wings, 1870. It is a typical gospel song melody with very little variation in the male parts, but quite tuneful progressions in the soprano and alto. Converse compiled and edited a number of Sunday school songbooks in association with W. B. Bradbury and Ira D. Sankey, and wrote some tunes under the pseudonym of Karl Reden. He went overseas in 1855 and studied law, philosophy, and music at Leipzig. He returned to Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1859 and engaged in a successful law practice there. He composed string quartets, cantatas, chorales, and hymn tunes. He died on October 18, 1918, at Highwood, New Jersey.

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