Frances Ridley Havergal (1836–79) wrote this text in November 1870, in a season of hard grief. She had lost her niece Evelyn Crane, to whom she had been governess, in 1868; then, two days after Easter in 1870, her father died suddenly. The Rev. William H. Havergal was himself a poet and musician, and Frances leaned on him hard; her sister recalled that she “delighted to talk out hard questions” with him. Out of that loss came a hymn of pure adoration. Havergal read both Hebrew and Greek, and the text is dense with Scripture: “whom yet unseen we love” from 1 Peter 1:8–9, “O name of might and favor” from Philippians 2:9, and middle stanzas drawing on Romans, Colossians, and Ephesians to confess the Father’s eternal will to save us. The first three stanzas are our praise on earth; the fourth is our worship in heaven, using the marriage imagery of Psalm 45 to ask that our earthly song be consummated among the Church Triumphant.
Sung at Our Saviour
2025