Elizabeth (Bessie) Ann Porter Head (1849/1850–1936) was the youngest daughter of Tobias Porter, the manager of a flour mill in Belfast. Between 1897 and 1907, Bessie Porter helped found several YWCA branches for the South Africa General Mission (now the Africa Evangelical Fellowship) in Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, and Johannesburg, South Africa. She toured North America with the chairman of the Mission in 1906–1907, Albert Alfred Head (1844–1928), whom she married. The South Africa General Mission was closely associated with the Keswick Convention, an evangelical offshoot of the Holiness movement, founded in 1875 by Anglican Canon T.D. Harford-Battersby, Vicar of St. John’s, Keswick, and Robert Wilson, a Cumberland Quaker. The annual meetings have hosted numerous notable speakers and were known for fervent prayer and hymn singing. Bessie Porter Head wrote “O Breath of Life,” which first appeared in Head’s prose and poem collection, Heavenly Places, and other Messages (1920)1. I really like this arrangement by Emu music, and sure you will too; enjoy!
O Breath of Life,
Come sweeping through us
Revive Thy Church with life and power;
O Breath of Life,
Come, cleanse, renew us,
And fit Thy Church to meet this hour
O Wind of God, come bend us, break us
‘Till humbly we confess our need;
Then in Thy tenderness remake us,
Revive, restore, for this we plead.
O Breath of Love, come breathe within us,
Renewing thought and will and heart;
Come, Love of Christ, afresh to win us,
Revive Thy Church in every part.
O Heart of Christ, once broken for us,
‘Tis there we find our strength and rest;
Our broken contrite hearts now solace,
And let Thy waiting Church be blest.
Revive us, Lord! Is zeal abating
While harvest fields are vast and white?
Revive us, Lord, the world is waiting,
Equip Thy Church to spread the light.
1umcdiscipleship.org/articles/history-of-hymns-o-breath-of-life-come-sweeping-through-us
Hymn of the Day 