the Fairest of Ten Thousand to My Soul: Reflections on Lily Valley

He was a bricklayer. He played five instruments. He formed a brass band with his three sons to guard preachers from angry mobs - and accidentally founded the Salvation Army's musical tradition. Then he sat down in a borrowed room in Lincoln and wrote a hymn.Charles William Fry wrote "The Lily of the Valley" in June 1881, drawing from the Song of Solomon's most intimate imagery to describe the most important discovery of his life: that Jesus is a friend who is everything, a comfort in every sorrow, a stay in every trouble, and - above all else - the fairest of ten thousand to the soul that has found Him. Fry died the following year. The hymn has been singing ever since, in more than four hundred hymnals, in dozens of languages, on six continents.The Fairest of Ten Thousand to My Soul is the thirteenth volume in the Songs of the Redeemed series. Moving phrase by phrase through Fry's beloved hymn, Elias Hartwell opens each line into the world of the Song of Solomon, the theology of union with Christ, and the lived experience of a faith tested under fire. Here is Christ as the Lily of the Valley - blooming in the sheltered, shadowed places where souls most often find themselves. Here is Christ as the Bright and Morning Star - the cosmic herald of the eternal dawn. Here is the soul that has forsaken all, torn its idols, and found that what remains is more beautiful than everything surrendered.For the soul in the valley who needs to know the Lily blooms there too. For every heart that has sung this refrain and felt, beneath its warmth, a love it could not fully name -He is the fairest.