The Heavenly Guest

Author: Anne Steele

Anne Steele was the daughter of Particular Baptist preacher and timber merchant William Steele. She spent her entire life in Broughton, Hampshire, near the southern coast of England, and devoted much of her time to writing. Some accounts of her life portray her as a lonely, melancholy invalid, but a revival of research in the last decade indicates that she had been more active and social than what was previously thought. She was theologically conversant with Dissenting ministers and "found herself at the centre of a literary circle that included family members from various generations, as well as local literati." She chose a life of singleness to focus on her craft. Before Christmas in 1742, she declined a marriage proposal from contemporar… Go to person page >

And will the Lord thus condescend? Anne Steele. [The Love of Christ]. First published in her Poems, 1760, vol. i. p. 67, in (5 stanzas of 4 lines, based on Rev. iii. 20, and entitled "The Heavenly Guest." In 1769 it was included in the Bristol Baptist Collection of Ash and Evans, and came thus into common use. It was also repeated in a new edition of the Poems, 1780, and in Sedgwick's reprint of her Hymns, 1863, p. 42. At the present time its use is mainly confined to America.

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)