19 May 2013-
Just As I Am” is one of the few hymns for which we know not only the author’s story but also the exact circumstances in which it was written. Charlotte Elliott of Brighton, England (1789-1871) was either born, or in early life had become, an invalid. Her life was a testimony to patient endurance in suffering, not only physical, but also emotional and spiritual. This was the context in which she wrote the hymn, as her nephew the Rev. Handley C. G. Moule recounted it in 1897:
But ill health still beset her … it often caused her the peculiar pain of a seeming uselessness in her life while the circle around her was full of unresting service-ableness for God. Such a time of trial marked the year 1834, when she was forty-five years old, and living in Westfield Lodge, Brighton…
Her brother, the Rev. H. V. Elliott, had not long before conceived the plan of St. Mary’s Hall, at Brighton — a school designed to give, at nominal cost, a high education to the daughters of clergymen… . In aid of St. Mary’s Hall there was to be held a bazaar … Westfield Lodge was all astir; every member of the large circle was occupied morning and night in the preparations, with the one exception of the ailing sister Charlotte — as full of eager interest as any of them, but physically fit for nothing.
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