I am not skilled to understand

From its opening words, Dorothy (‘Dora’) Greenwell’s only enduring hymn conveys a kind of artless innocence—a sense of continuing wonder in Christ, her Saviour. It appeared first in her 1874 collection Songs of Salvation, then in Carey Bonner’s Sunday School Hymnary of 1905 and later in several main hymnals. In the USA, Sankey included it with the heading ‘My Refuge, my Saviour’, recalling 2 Samuel 22:3. But 1 Timothy 1:15 underlies the words; that Christ ‘stands’ at the right hand of God (1.4) is uniquely shown at the end of Acts 7; ‘Sankey’ has the more bland ‘is’. Originally 3.2 was ‘sinful man’; 3.3, ‘you count it …’; 4.1–3, ‘And O that he fulfilled may see/ the travail of his soul … / and with his work …’; and 5.2 ‘my solace’. These changes are made in HTC 2nd edn; MP and other books print different revisions. A comparison with Wesleyan doctrine is of interest; the Wesleys reasoned, ‘for all, therefore for me’, and this writer, ‘for sinners, therefore for me’; cf notes to 703.

Of the two tunes commonly set to the comparatively rare metre of this text, Cecil J Allen’s EWHURST is the more recent and probably the better known. It dates from the early 20th c; from the late 19th (1885) Wm Kirkpatrick’s MY SAVIOUR (=GREENWELL) is also in use, notably in N America. Carey Bonner (aka ‘Ernest Leslie’) also named his tune for these words GREENWELL in 1905.

b Greenwell Ford, Lanchester, nr Consett, Co Durham 1821, d Clifton, Bristol 1882. Sometimes thought to have been a Quaker because of her later sympathies, she came from a strongly clerical Anglican family. Bu when her father’s estate had to be sold, at the age of 27 she went to live first with her two ordained brothers, then with her widowed mother in Durham, and then often alone in London, Torquay and Clifton. Of a keen intellect herself, though suffering from poor health, she put much effort into helping children with learning difficulties and in opposing animal vivisection. Her many writings of verse and prose included The Patience of Hope (1860), a volume of essays in 1862, Carmina Crucis (‘Songs of the Cross’, 1869) and Songs of Salvation (1873). Describing herself as ‘a somewhat ardent politician’, her greater aims were social and benevolent. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti were among contemporary authors she specially admired, and her work is not without humour. Her selected Poems including songs and sonnets were published posthumously with a biographical introduction in 1889. The American Quaker poet J G Whittier held a very high opinion of her spiritual writing, while others have judged her prose to be of a higher quality than her poetry; W Dorling published a biography in 1885. No.760.