Like A River Glorious (Quick Thoughts on a Hymn)

Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-1879) is sometimes called “England’s Consecration Poet” A voluminous writer, both of devotional prose and poetry, she was a godly woman whose pen became the means of effective ministry for the Lord. Says a contemporary, “Simply and sweetly she sang the love of God and His way of salvation….The burden of her writings is a free and full salvation, through the Redeemer’s merits, for every sinner who will receive it.” In 1874 she produced a hymn she called “Perfect Peace.” As with many of our hymns, it now takes the opening phrase as its title.

The song begins, “Like a river glorious / Is God’s perfect peace, / Over all victorious / In its bright increase; / Perfect, yet it floweth / Fuller every day, / Perfect, yet it groweth / Deeper all the way.” Then, the stately dignity of the tune carries the singer into the confident testimony of a refrain that applies the image more directly to the experience of the child of God: “Stayed upon Jehovah, / Hearts are fully blest; / Finding as He promised, / Perfect peace and rest.”

The prophet Isaiah speaks to the Lord in a similar vein, saying, “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You” (Isa. 26:3). To express the richness of God’s gift, “perfect peace” is, in the original Hebrew, shalom shalom–peace peace, a peaceful peace. And the word Isaiah uses connotes such ideas as wholeness and soundness, safety and security, tranquility and contentment. The Amplified Bible enriches our understanding of the prophet’s words, with: “You will guard him and keep him in perfect and constant peace whose mind [both its inclination and its character] is stayed on You, because he commits himself to You, leans on You, and hopes confidently in You.”