Elizabeth Prentiss - more love to thee | Sharon James (ISBN: 851519261)

Elizabeth Prentiss was born in Portland, Maine, in 1818, the daughter of a well-known revival preacher, Dr. Edward Payson.

As a young girl, she was present in services where there was a powerful awareness of the holiness of God; she witnessed scenes of corporate conviction of sin and, as a youngster, she was committed to praying for the conversion of her friends. Although her father died just before her tenth birthday, his abiding legacy to Elizabeth was two-fold: a passion for holiness, and a conviction that surrender to the sovereign will of God is the way to real peace.

Ministry to the bereaved

Elizabeth spent several years teaching before her marriage to George Prentiss, a Congregational minister. She served alongside George, first in New Bedford (1845-1850) and then in New York (1851-1873). When George became a professor at Union Theological Seminary in 1873, Elizabeth missed the pastoral work that had been part of their lives: she had found her niche in visitation of the sick and bereaved, and in ministry among women.

Marriage and childbearing were the inevitable destiny for the great majority of women in the 19th century. All too often the joy of having children was overshadowed. Many infants were stillborn, childhood disease carried off others, and many mothers found their health destroyed — if not by the trauma of mismanaged labour, then by the constant anxiety of nursing critically ill children.

Surrender to the will of God

Elizabeth and George had six children, all of whom fell critically ill at various stages. Elizabeth herself nearly died after the birth of one child and was left permanently weakened. Two of her babies died. Her early conviction that obedience meant surrender to God’s will whatever the circumstances was tested in the most painful of circumstances. These experiences, however, served to deepen Elizabeth’s conviction that the purpose of this life is to prepare for heaven. She believed that sufferings drive the Christian closer to God, as they force greater dependence on him. She also believed that surrendering to the will of God is the path to holiness in that it leads to the death of self. ‘God’s will looks so much better to us than our own that nothing would tempt us to decide our child’s future’, she wrote at one point.

Love for grieving mothers

Her experiences gave her a deep empathy with the many women she was called on to help. As a minister’s wife she was constantly called on to visit mothers whose babies had died, or whose children were critically ill. The number of funerals of infants she attended probably ran into hundreds. She understood well that a mother never ‘gets over’ the death of a child: ‘We mothers may cease to grieve, outwardly, but we never forget what has gone out of our sight.’ But she also believed that, as a Christian, the deepest joy is found in surrendering all to God: ‘Let me give to him, not what I value least, but what I prize and delight in most.’

Life-changing comfort

As far as she could see, the biological destiny of the women around her was not going to change: they would go on having babies, they would go on losing their health, and many of their babies would die. But Elizabeth felt compelled to share the life-changing comfort which her knowledge of Christ had brought to her. She regarded her own ill health as the means God used to make her depend on him more. She regarded the death of her children as drawing her closer to heaven, as she longed to be with Christ, where they had gone ahead. She wanted to get this message across, especially to young women, but merely stating these truths to bereaved mothers would seem crass, so she wrote a novel that would entertain, and hold and move, even as it communicated the spiritual lessons which had gripped her.

Stepping heavenward

Stepping heavenward, published in 1869, is a story tracing out how the day-to-day events of a woman’s life can be used to prepare her for eternity. Within 30 years more than 200,000 copies were sold. It is written in the form of a journal, tracing the life of ‘Katy’ from when she is 16. Self-willed and impetuous, she cannot see any appeal in the godliness displayed by her mother, but gradually she realises that happiness is found in knowing God. Marriage and motherhood pose real challenges: she struggles with exhaustion, irritability, sleeplessness, and the feeling that she is failing as a mother and a wife. There is the strain of difficult in-laws living with the family, and the trauma of bereavement, poverty and ill health. In the midst of constant family demands she has to fight to maintain any form of devotional life. The truth that despite all this, she is in reality ‘stepping heavenward’ brought in much of Elizabeth’s own experience. The novel urged women to view every act of obedience, however humble, as an act of worship. This gave significance to everyday life. Women with a sense of purpose and dignity were less likely to succumb to depression and all the physical problems associated with that.

‘God never places us in any position in which we cannot grow. We may fancy that he does. We may fear we are so impeded by fretting, petty cares that we are gaining nothing; but when we are not sending any branches upward, we may be sending roots downward. Perhaps in the time of our humiliation, when everything seems a failure, we are making the best kind of progress.’

Elizabeth wrote several other novels, a number of children’s books, and many poems. The central theme of her life and writings is captured in her best-known hymn, ‘More Love to Thee, O Christ’. This is what she wanted for herself, her family, and her readers.

Devotion and service

Elizabeth Prentiss found inspiration from several of the mystical writers, but her devotion was not focused inward at the expense of ministry to others. There was a balance of inner devotion and outward service. Within her family she was loved for her cheerfulness, her desire for the happiness of others, her energy, and her gifts of home making. She threw herself into gardening or baking or painting or decorating with the same verve that she gave to hymn writing or prayer. Within the church she was known for her ceaseless visitation of the ill and the bereaved, her skilful nursing of the sick, and her hospitality, as much as for her leadership of women’s prayer meetings or Bible readings.

Elizabeth Prentiss’s writings are still popular because they show women that faithfulness in simple everyday tasks has eternal significance. She lived at a time when Christians divided fiercely over the question of holiness and how to achieve it. While she denied that ‘sinless perfection’ can be reached in this life, she insisted that the quest for holiness was one that every Christian should be engaged in. One close friend wrote: ‘Believing in Christ was to her not so much a duty as the deepest joy of her life, heightening all other joys, and she was not satisfied until her friends shared with her in this experience. She believed it to be attainable by all, founded on a complete submitting of the human to the divine will in all things, great and small.’

Closer to Christ

Elizabeth wrote so prolifically because she wanted to bring the joy and comfort of the love of Christ into the lives of others. In particular, she wrote for women: showing them that surrender to the will of God can provide strength for mundane tasks, and grace for the various challenges of family relationships. After Elizabeth’s death, one of her childhood friends, Carrie, recalled how, as a young wife, she had been devastated by the death of her two young children. Carrie had collapsed with grief, and was unable to get up for days. Then a letter of condolence from Elizabeth arrived, written shortly after she herself had buried one of her infants. ‘God is left; Christ is left; sickness, accident, death cannot touch you here’, she wrote. ‘May sorrow bring us both nearer to Christ!’ Carrie remembered that the effect of the letter had been electrifying. ‘I was fairly aroused, lifted up, placed upon my feet, and by the grace of God have continued to this day.’

Elizabeth Prentiss lived and ministered nearly 200 years ago, but her life and works still speak powerfully today. (Since being reprinted in the 1990s over 100,000 copies of Stepping heavenward have been sold, and several of her other books have also been reprinted.) We may not see such high rates of infant mortality or death in childbirth, but families are still torn apart, often by divorce or separation. Illness and bereavement are realities in every family. Elizabeth could testify: ‘If my Lord and Master will go with me, and keeps on making me more and more like himself, I can be happy anywhere . . . or be made content not to be happy’. Whatever the circumstances, the Christian can grow in love for God, and suffering can be the means by which we are drawn even closer to him. Elizabeth’s own life shows this to be a reality.

Taken from Sharon James’s latest book, Elizabeth Prentiss: More Love to Thee, published by The Banner of Truth Trust (hardback, £15.00, ISBN 0 85151 926 1).

Elizabeth Prentiss - more love to thee