Of every human woe,
A God--to claim the kingdom
And vanquish every foe.

This stanza, the last of her little poem on the "Eternal Fitness of
Jesus," came to her when, returning from an exciting service, filled
with thoughts of her unworthiness and of the glorious beauty of her
Saviour, she had turned down a sheltered lane to pray alone. There on
her knees in communion with God her soul felt the spirit of the sacred
song. By the time she reached home she had formed it into words.

The first and second stanzas, written later, are these:

Great Author of salvation
And providence for man,
Thou rulest earth and heaven
With Thy far-reaching plan.
Today or on the morrow,
Whatever woe betide,
Grant us Thy strong assistance,
Within Thy hand to hide.

What though the winds be angry,
What though the waves be high
While wisdom is the Ruler,
The Lord of earth and sky?
What though the flood of evil
Rise stormily and dark?
No soul can sink within it;
God is Himself the ark.

Mrs. Ann Griffiths, of Dolwar Fechan, Montgomeryshire, was born in 1776,
and died in 1805. "She remains," says Dr. Parry, her fellow-countryman,
"a romantic figure in the religious history of Wales. Her hymns leave
upon the reader an undefinable impression both of sublimity and
mysticism. Her brief life-history is most worthy of study both from a
literary and a religious point of view."

[Illustration: Isaac Watts, D.D.]

A suggestive chapter of her short earthly career is compressed in a
sentence by the author of "Sweet Singers of Wales:"

"She had a Christian life of eight years and a married life of ten
months."

She died at the age of twenty-nine. In 1904, near the centennial of her
death, amid the echoes of her own hymns, and the rising waves of the
great Refreshing over her native land, the people of Dolwar Fechan
dedicated the new "Ann Griffiths Memorial Chapel" to her name and to the
glory of God.

Although the Welsh were not slow to adopt the revival tones of other
lands, it was the native, and what might be called the national, lyrics
of that emotional race that were sung with the richest unction and
_hwyl_ (as the Cymric word is) during the recent reformation, and that
evinced the strongest hold on the common heart. Needless to say that
with them was the world-famous song of William Williams,--

Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah;

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