The Strange Story Of A Stanza

Dyson Hague | Added: Apr 02, 2023 | Category: History

One Sunday evening, when I was Rector of St. Paul’s Church, Halifax, ‘The Westminster Abbey of Canada’, as the Governor of Nova Scotia used to call it, I told towards the close of my sermon the following story:

Many years ago, Dr Valpy, a well-known English scholar, wrote a little verse of four lines as the longing of his heart and the confession of his faith. This was the simple stanza:

In peace let me resign my breath,

And Thy salvation see,

My sins deserve eternal death,

But Jesus died for me.

Some time afterwards he gave this verse to his friend, Dr Marsh, a well-known Church of England clergyman and the father of Miss Marsh, the author of the Life of Captain Hedley Vicars, and the verse became a great blessing to him. Dr Marsh gave the lines to his friend, Lord Roden, who was so impressed with them that he got Dr Marsh to write them out and fastened the paper over the mantelpiece in his study; and there, yellow with age, they hung for many years, a memorial of the beloved hand that traced them.

Some time after this an old friend, General Taylor, one of the heroes of Waterloo, came to visit him at Tollymore Park. Lord Roden noticed that the eyes of the old veteran were always fixed for a few moments on the motto over the mantelpiece. Lord Roden said, ‘Why, General, you will soon know the verse by heart.’ The General replied with great emphasis of feeling, ‘I know it now by heart’, and the simple words were the means of bringing him to know the way of salvation. Some two years afterwards the physician, who had been with the old General while he lay a-dying, wrote to Lord Roden to say that his friend had departed in peace, and that the last words which fell from the old General’s lips were the words which he had learned to love in his lifetime: 

In peace let me resign my breath,

And Thy salvation see;

My sins deserve eternal death,

But Jesus died for me.

Years afterwards, at the house of a neighbour, Lord Roden happened to tell the story of the old General and these lines, and among those who heard it was a young officer in the British Army who had recently returned from the Crimea. He listened carelessly enough, and no impression seemed to be made at the time. A few months later, however, Lord Roden received a message from the officer that he wanted to see him, as he was in a rapid decline. As the Earl entered the sick-room the dying officer extended both his hands to welcome him, repeating the lines:

In peace let me resign my breath,

And Thy salvation see;

My sins deserve eternal death,

But Jesus died for me.

And then he added, ‘These simple words have been God’s message of peace and comfort to my heart in this illness, and they have been brought to my memory by the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, after days of darkness and distress’.

As I said, I was telling this story in my sermon in old St. Paul’s, but as I began to tell it I noticed that an old gentleman, who was sitting in a pew not far from the pulpit just in front of me, a representative of one of the oldest families in Nova Scotia, was being overcome with an extraordinary emotion. His whole frame seemed to quiver with some unwonted excitement, and his eyes looked bright with a strange light. I thought for the moment that it was a transient attack of some physical affection. But as I went on telling the story there was no doubt that it had in some way seized upon the very soul of the listener and touched his feelings with some strange and indescribable suggestion. And when at last I came to the part about the Crimean Officer I thought that the old gentleman would have almost cried out in the church, so deeply was he affected. The story ended the sermon. 

After the singing of the hymn I went to the vestry. I had scarcely got there when a knock was heard at the door, and the old gentleman, with emotion still evident, came and said, “Where did you get that story?” I told him I had read it in the work of a modern author whose works are widely read. He said, ‘I do not know whether you saw that I was very much touched by it, but it almost overcame me.’ And then, with tears streaming from his eyes, he told me this story: ‘Years ago, when he was a young man, careless and indifferent in matters of religion, he sauntered one day in his walk into an old churchyard near Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in the land of Evangeline, and seeing a fallen gravestone, he overturned it in pure curiosity. And there he read at the foot, engraved in the stone a verse of four lines that took such a hold upon him, and so clearly explained to him the way of salvation, that they were the means of his conversion. And from that day, nearly fifty years before, he had by God’s grace as a result of those four lines, led a consecrated life for Christ. The lines were:

In peace let me resign my breath,

And Thy salvation see;

My sins deserve eternal death,

But Jesus died for me.

He said, ‘You can imagine my amazement, as well as my delight when I heard you tell the story about the lines. You brought back to me the wonderful way in which God was pleased to save my soul.’

It was not long after that I was sent for to visit this old gentleman in a sickness, which gradually grew more serious. One of the last things he did before he died was to take my hand affectionately and ask me, as his clergyman to do him a favour; and that was, that at his funeral and over his coffin I would tell the story of the lines in the hope that the prayer of a dying man might be answered, and that they might be a blessing to many souls more. Soon afterwards he died; and at his funeral, which was attended by some of the most distinguished citizens of Halifax, a large and representative body of prominent men, I told over his coffin amidst the most profound and interested silence, the story of the stanza that had transformed so many lives . I ended by saying that it was the wish of the dear old man on his dying bed that the words, which would be distributed as his last memorial to all present, might become a blessing to their souls. And as each one passed from the house of mourning he received a beautiful card, elegantly printed in purple, with the name, and age, and burial date of that old saint of God, and on the other side the never-to-be-forgotten words:

In peace let me resign my breath,

And Thy salvation see,

My sins deserve eternal death

But Jesus died for me.

The secret of the wonderful power that resides in these lines cannot be told. It may be that they were written in prayer and watered by tears of love. I only know that when I told this story in a vacation service in one of the charming hotels in the White Mountains, New Hampshire, an American gentleman, a prominent New Yorker, was so deeply impressed that he said, after hearing the words, ‘I have rarely heard anything that made such an impression upon me. Never in my life before have I so clearly grasped the way of salvation through faith in the Crucified.’ May they become the confession of faith of all who hear, and all who read!

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