Story of a Hymn In-Ah Lee     This hymn is one of the most beloved hymns in the English language world. Notable evangelists such as Charles Spurgeon, Dwight L. Moody and Billy Graham have used and referenced it on many occasions and countless people claim it has led them to their salvation.     The writer of this hymn, Charlotte Elliott1789?1871 was born into a very well-known and respected religious family in Victorian England.1) Her maternal grandfather, Henry Venn, was one of the founders of the Clapham Sect (an influential and reformative group within the Anglican Church), her uncle, John Venn, was one of the original founders of the Church Missionary Society and her cousin, Henry Venn, is recognized as one of the foremost Protestant missions strategists of the nineteenth century.     Charlotte Elliott was born on March 18, 1789 on the outskirts of London, England, in a village called Clapham. She lived a somewhat privileged and carefree life for the first three decades of her life and became popular as a writer of humorous verse and as a portrait artist. Having been of frail health even in her youth, Charlotte suffered a serious illness at age 32 that left her a semi-invalid for the rest of her life.Charlotte herself wrote,       “My Heavenly Father knows, and He alone, what it is, day after day, and hour after hour, to fight against bodily feelings of almost overpowering weakness and languor and exhaustion, to resolve, as He enables me to do, not to yield to the slothfulness, the depression, the irritability, such as a body causes me to long to indulge, but to rise every morning …”       There were times when just getting up in the morning was almost more than she could bear to do. It doesn’t take long for such affliction of the body and mind to wear a person down to the point of despondency and despair. Her condition affected her spiritual point of view. Even though raised in a very religious family, she herself was often filled with doubts that undermined her faith and trust in God. Because of her infirmities, she rarely assembled with Christians in a church setting, but remained at home alone.     Her family often enjoyed entertaining distinguished guests in their home, and in 1822 they had welcomed a young man (just two years older than Charlotte) by the name of Cesar Malan. Malan was an evangelist and hymn writer from Geneva, Switzerland. He was the originator of the modern hymn movement in the French Reformed Church and is said to have written over one thousand hymns in his life time, some of which are st

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