"On a Sunday morning in August, the Vicar of Harro­gate, Canon Gibbon, happened to preach from the text, 'Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee," Isaiah 26:3 and alluded to the fact that in the Hebrew the words are "Peace, peace," twice repeated, and happily translated in the 1611 translation by the phrase, "Perfect peace."

This sermon set my father's mind working on the subject. He always found it easiest to express in verse whatever subject was upper­most in his mind, so that when on the afternoon of that Sunday he visited an aged and dying relative, Archdeacon Hill of Liverpool, and found him some­what troubled in mind, it was natural to him to express in verse the spiritual comfort which he desired to con­vey. Taking up a sheet of paper he then and there wrote down the hymn just exactly as it stands, and read it to this dying Christian."

Certainly, these seven short verses capture and answer some of the most troubling questions we face in life.

Jerry Maday

www.worcesterchurch.org