The Excellency of Scripture

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 >

Father of mercies, in Thy word. Anne Steele. [Holy Scripture.] First published in her Poems on Subjects chiefly Devotional, 1760, vol. i. p. 58, in 12 stanzas of 4 lines, repeated in the enlarged edition, 1780, and in Sedgwick's reprint of her Hymns, 1863, p. 36. In 1769, Ash & Evans gave a selection of 6 stanzas in their Bristol Baptist Collection, No. 79, and from this arrangement mainly the well-known hymn is taken. It is in extensive use in Great Britain and America, and is one of the most popular of Miss Steele's hymns.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)