“We look at our fellow men too much from the standpoint of our own prejudices. They may be wrong, they may have their faults and foibles, they may call out all the meanest and most hateful in us. But they are not all wrong; they have their virtues, and when they excite our bad passions by their own, they may be as ashamed and sorry as we are irritated. And I think some of the best, most contrite, most useful of men and women, whose prayers prevail with God and bring down blessings into the homes in which they dwell, often possess unlovely traits that furnish them with their best discipline. The very fact that they are ashamed of themselves drives them to God; they feel safe in His presence. And while they lie in the very dust of self-confusion as His feet, they are dear to Him and have power with Him.”
Be the first to react on this!
Elizabeth Payson Prentiss was an author, well known for her hymn "More Love to Thee, O Christ" and the didactic story Stepping Heavenward (1869). She was born and raised in Portland, Maine, United States, the fifth of eight children (only six survived) of the eminent Congregationalist pastor Edward Payson. The influences of New England Christianity, consisting of the inherited Puritan foundation with added evangelistic, missional, and philanthropic elements, were evident in the Payson family.
As a young woman, she published some of her children's stories and poems in "The Youth's Companion," a New England religious periodical. In 1838, she opened a small girls' school in her home and took up a Sabbath-school class as well. Two years later, she left for Richmond, VA, to be a department head at a girls' boarding school. In 1845, she married George Lewis Prentiss, a brother of her dear friend Anna Prentiss Stearns, to whom are addressed some of her warmest and most intimate letters. The Prentisses settled in New Bedford, MA, where George became pastor of South Trinitarian Church.
Though she continually struggled with poor health, Mrs. Prentiss went on to have three children. After Rev. Prentiss resigned his charge in New York, the family went abroad to Europe for a couple of years, returned to New York (where Rev. Prentiss pastored the Church of the Covenant), and eventually settled in Dorset, VT, where Mrs. Prentiss would die in 1878 at the age of 60.