About the Author

Rev. Charles Busbridge Snepp was a pastor, whose special interest in hymns led - with the encouragement of others - to his preparing a new, comprehensive hymnbook for the church, both for private, individual worship and for corporate worship as a church congregation. He was the editor for the texts, and the leader of the project, for Songs of Grace and Glory, more than 1,100 hymns. Frances Ridley Havergal prepared all of the music scores. This was a true labor of love for both of them, very costly in time and effort over a period of nine years. Snepp's work as a pastor was also very valuable, and he was a true brother, friend, and pastor to his colleague, F.R.H. Rev. Snepp had first contacted William Henry Havergal about the preparation of the music scores for this new hymnbook, but soon W.H.H. died, aged 77. Later Snepp and William Henry's daughter Frances Ridley Havergal saw that she was the one who should prepare the music for Songs of Grace and Glory. Like her father, Frances Ridley Havergal was a wonderfully gifted musician, both as a singer, pianist, and composer. Her formal education ended when she was seventeen, with one term at a young women's school in Dusseldorf, Germany, yet she was a true scholar all her life. Fluent in German and French and nearly so in Italian, she read and loved the Reformers in Latin, German, and French. Knowledge was never an end in itself, only a means to know better her Lord and Saviour and to help to bring others to know Him. Like her works, her life richly touched the ones near her and countless many who met or heard her. The Lord Jesus Christ was her alone, only beauty, and she glowed Him and His truth. Her works are a gold-mine of help and enrichment. As her sister Maria, wrote, Knowing her intense desire that Christ should be magnified, whether by her life or in her death, may it be to His glory that in these pages she, being dead, "Yet speaketh !" David L. Chalkley and Glen T. Wegge, editors