Affliction Sanctified

Affliction is a stormy deep,

   Where wave resounds to wave;

Though o’er my head the billows roll,

   I know the Lord can save.

The hand that now withholds my joys,                                        

   Can reinstate my peace;

And he who bade the tempest roar,

   Can bid that tempest cease.

In the dark watches of the night

   I’ll count his mercies o’er;                                                                   

I’ll praise him for ten thousand past,

   And humbly sue for more.

When darkness and when sorrows rose,

   And press’d on every side,

The Lord has still sustain’d my steps,                                

   And still has been my Guide.

Here will I rest, and build my hopes

   Nor murmur at his rod;

He’s more than all the world to me

   My Health, my Life, my God!                                                  

Text: The History of Jenny Hickling: An Authentic Narrative (New York: American Tract Society, [c. 1825]; also Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 7, pp. 324-25.