Peace, Perfect Peace -- Edward Henry Bickersteth, Jr.

He must have had plenty of questions that nagged at his conscience regarding various circumstances, but he didn’t feel the need to hide them. Instead, Edward Bickersteth wrote them for others to see when he composed “Peace, Perfect Peace” in 1875. What if he had forgotten the ending punctuation, and made it a period, not a question mark? Some of our contemporary hymnals do just that, to our detriment. Would it be important to know, that Edward had some tough, even sarcastic questions, and not declaring at the outset that he had the answers? Was it his own searching, pleading voice that Bickersteth used that day? See if it’s yours too.

Edward Bickersteth was, someone might say, a “professional” man of faith who did not take leave of his calling, even if he was on vacation in England. This 50-year old guy might have been excused if he had taken a mental holiday, but instead his ears perked up when the English minister’s sermon reached him in  an emotional place where he’d not been before. Isaiah 26: 3 told him that God’s peace is perfection. It must have been providential that he visited a dying relative a few hours later, and probably not an accident either that his kin was despondent. What does a close family talk about in their last earthly moments? We can guess what Edward and this individual may have discussed that afternoon – sorrow; life’s stresses; loneliness; unease with the beyond, even for the believer; and physical pain. These issues’ fingerprints are on Bickersteth’s poetry he composed that day. Some vacation, huh? Though Bickersteth must have previously been near others who were in death’s throes, did being with a fading family member change the dynamic? One might think so. Yes, he’d been trained at an institution of higher education, was an accomplished poet, and had been in ministry for over 20 years by the afternoon of that 1875 encounter with his relative. But in this crucible, he evidently drew on something most recent for this intense experience. He thought ‘I just heard something today that might help’. If it’s true that out of death comes life, then that’s what happened anew for Edward Bickersteth that day, as he gave life to a new hymn while watching and helping his relative expire with greater calm. The peace, perfect peace is not a stuttering disability. It’s a transformative experience, one that is a divine overwhelming of evil’s designs, as the composer reflected on what Isaiah has to say.  

Perhaps it helped to embrace the apprehensions, not dismiss them, Edward may have reasoned. That’s a ‘Job’ approach, you might say. Give voice to the anger and disappointment, yet maintain that He’s trustworthy. Even Jesus took this path in his death moment. “…why have you forsaken me?” Bickersteth’s hymn is so counter to what I most often do when I hear a dying person’s complaint. I avoid the tough, bitter-sounding words death vocalizes; instead, I might urge the person with something like‘Oh, don’t say that, just think of the good things’. But, Edward didn’t discard the questions. He listened and gave them a reply, the only one –the person of Jesus--that we’ll be able to check out, after we’ve checked out.     

See more information on the song discussed above in The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.  Also, see Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1990.

See further biographic information on the composer here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bickersteth_%28bishop_of_Exeter%29

See this site also for song’s story, and to see all original eight verses, including one reportedly never published: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/p/e/a/peaceper.htm