Pardon and Rest for the Weary Soul

Author: Anne Steele

Anne Steele was the daughter of Particular Baptist preacher and timber merchant William Steele. She spent her entire life in Broughton, Hampshire, near the southern coast of England, and devoted much of her time to writing. Some accounts of her life portray her as a lonely, melancholy invalid, but a revival of research in the last decade indicates that she had been more active and social than what was previously thought. She was theologically conversant with Dissenting ministers and "found herself at the centre of a literary circle that included family members from various generations, as well as local literati." She chose a life of singleness to focus on her craft. Before Christmas in 1742, she declined a marriage proposal from contemporar… Go to person page >

Come, weary souls, with sin distressed. Anne Steele. [Invitation.] First published in her Poems on Subjects chiefly Devotional, 1760, vol. i. p. 27, in 5 stanzas of 4 lines, and entitled, “Weary souls invited to rest" (2nd ed., vol. i. p. 27); and in Sedgwick’s reprint of her Hymns, 1863. It is in extensive use both in Great Britain and America, and sometimes with "sins" for "sin" in the opening line. It was introduced into the Nonconformist hymnals through the Bristol Collection, 1769, of Ash & Evans, and into those of the Church of England by Conyers, 1772, and Toplady, 1776.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)