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A sermon first disturbs Hope St. Clair’s comfortable assumptions, but it is a hymn that gives words to the spiritual need she has only just begun to recognise.
Sitting in the fading light of a cathedral, surrounded by music, colour and stillness, Hope hears the choir sing:
Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin?
The blood of Jesus whispers peace within.
The words reach her at the point where she has become painfully conscious of the distance between her outward religion and her inward life. She has always believed in God, but that belief has made little practical difference to her choices. Now, for the first time, she understands both her need of forgiveness and the possibility of peace.
Amy Le Feuvre does not leave the hymn behind in that cathedral. Its successive verses return throughout A Bit of Rough Road, accompanying Hope through duty, sorrow, separation, uncertainty and the shadow of death. The hymn becomes part of the novel’s structure, but it had already been offering those same words of comfort to Christian congregations for more than thirty years.
A Hymn Written in 1875
“Peace, Perfect Peace” was written by Edward Henry Bickersteth in August 1875. At the time, he was an Anglican clergyman serving as Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead. He later became Dean of Gloucester and Bishop of Exeter.
Bickersteth came from a prominent evangelical Anglican family. His father, also named Edward Bickersteth, had been closely involved with the Church Missionary Society and was himself a writer of hymns and devotional works. The younger Bickersteth was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, ordained in 1848 and became known both for his ministry and his religious writing.
The origin of his best-known hymn can be traced to a particular Sunday in Harrogate. Bickersteth was staying there with his family when he heard the local vicar, Canon William Wynter Gibbon, preach on Isaiah 26:3:
“You will keep whoever’s mind is steadfast in perfect peace, because he trusts in you.”
The expression translated as “perfect peace” reflects the repetition of the Hebrew word for peace. The idea remained in Bickersteth’s thoughts after the service.
That afternoon, he visited an elderly relative, Archdeacon Hill of Liverpool, who was gravely ill and troubled in mind. Wishing to offer comfort, Bickersteth took up a sheet of paper and wrote the hymn. According to the account later given by his family, he read it to the dying man and then returned to his children, telling them that he had written a new hymn.
The circumstances of its composition help explain its unusual directness. It was not written as a detached reflection upon suffering. It was written in the presence of someone who needed to know whether Christian peace could remain real when death was very near.
A Question Followed by an Answer
Most of the hymn consists of short two-line stanzas. The first line raises a question; the second responds to it.
Peace, perfect peace, by thronging duties press’d?
To do the will of Jesus, this is rest.
The pattern is simple, but it allows the hymn to acknowledge difficulty without allowing difficulty the final word. It does not begin by insisting that the believer ought to feel peaceful. Instead, it voices the very questions that make peace seem impossible.
Can there be peace in a sinful world? Can it survive exhausting duties, surrounding sorrow, separation from loved ones, an unknown future or the approach of death?
Each answer directs attention away from changing circumstances and towards Jesus. Peace is found in His forgiveness, His presence, His keeping and His victory over death. The hymn does not claim that pressure, grief or uncertainty will immediately disappear. Its assurance rests upon who Christ is while those realities remain.
This question-and-answer form makes the hymn feel almost conversational. One voice expresses the heart’s anxiety, and another answers from Christian conviction. It can also be read as an inward dialogue between fear and faith.
That structure is particularly important in A Bit of Rough Road. Hope is not someone who has all the answers before the story begins. She is asking questions, often for the first time. The hymn meets her honestly because it does not rebuke the existence of those questions. It takes them seriously and answers them one by one.
Why the First Verse Matters to Hope
When Hope enters the cathedral, she has already heard a sermon that forced her to examine her life. The preacher’s words have stripped away her comfortable belief that respectable behaviour and occasional churchgoing are sufficient.
She sees herself as someone who loves pleasure more than God and who possesses the outward form of religion without its inward power. Her first response is not peace but condemnation. She feels that a holy God must reject her.
Then she hears the opening verse of the hymn.
Its answer does not depend upon Hope proving that she can become better. It points to “the blood of Jesus”, presenting peace as something made possible through Christ rather than earned through moral improvement.
This distinction shapes everything that follows. Hope soon becomes deeply concerned with usefulness, responsibility and service. Yet these things are not offered as the price of her forgiveness. Her work grows from a changed relationship with God; it does not create that relationship.
That is why the hymn’s first verse must come before the verse about pressing duties. Peace with God precedes useful service. Otherwise, Hope’s desire to become useful could easily become another attempt to establish her own worth.
Le Feuvre understands that energetic personalities may turn spiritual awakening into a new personal project. Hope is accustomed to throwing herself enthusiastically into whatever attracts her interest. She must learn that Christian faith is not simply a more serious activity to add to an already crowded life.
The peace she hears about in the cathedral is received through trust. It cannot be produced by effort, social confidence or strength of character.
A Hymn That Follows the Story
As the novel progresses, Le Feuvre places verses of “Peace, Perfect Peace” at carefully chosen moments. They are not merely repeated for atmosphere. The order of the hymn provides a map of the road Hope must travel.
The verse about “thronging duties” accompanies her movement into practical responsibility. Hope has long been busy, but she has not previously carried the daily burden of people depending upon her. Household confusion, family needs and financial limitations make duty more demanding than she imagined.
The verse does not promise rest after every task has been completed. It locates rest within obedience: “To do the will of Jesus, this is rest.” For Hope, this means that peace cannot depend upon achieving perfect domestic order or satisfying everyone around her.
The hymn then moves into sorrow and separation:
Peace, perfect peace, with sorrows surging round?
On Jesus’ bosom nought but calm is found.
Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away?
In Jesus’ keeping we are safe and they.
These verses allow Le Feuvre to explore the limits of Hope’s control. She may serve the people near her, but she cannot protect everyone she loves. Distance and circumstance place some lives beyond her immediate reach.
The verse concerning the unknown future becomes especially important because Hope repeatedly faces decisions without being shown their consequences. Faith does not provide her with a complete map. She is asked to trust while much of the road remains hidden:
Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown?
Jesus we know, and He is on the throne.
The answer does not claim that the future will soon become clear. It places confidence in the known character and authority of Christ rather than in knowledge of what will happen next.
When Peace Is Tested
The most searching use of the hymn comes when Hope believes that someone she loves may be taken from her. Until then, she has encountered hardship, responsibility and bereavement, but this crisis reaches more deeply into her emotional life.
Hope discovers that knowing the words of a hymn is not the same as remaining composed when its claims are tested. She rebels against what she fears may happen and is shocked by the desperation of her own thoughts.
Le Feuvre could have allowed her heroine to pass serenely through the crisis, demonstrating the perfection of her faith. Instead, she shows Hope failing at the very point where she believed herself strongest.
This makes the later reflection upon the hymn much more honest. Hope recognises that she had begun to feel quietly satisfied with her spiritual progress. She thought she had travelled successfully through each stanza and proved its truth. The crisis reveals that her peace had become partly dependent upon her own confidence.
Her failure does not cancel the hymn. It corrects her understanding of it.
Peace is not a spiritual performance. It does not mean that a Christian never feels fear, grief or rebellion. Hope must return to confession, forgiveness and dependence. She learns that the peace promised by the hymn belongs to Christ before it belongs to her.
That realisation gives the closing scenes of A Bit of Rough Road their humility. Hope is no longer quite so certain of herself, but she has stronger reason to trust God.
Peace Does Not Require a Smooth Road
The continuing appeal of “Peace, Perfect Peace” lies partly in its refusal to confuse peace with ease. Every stanza places peace beside something that appears to contradict it.
There is peace in a world of sin, under pressing duties, amid sorrow, across distance, before an unknown future and in the presence of death. The hymn does not ask readers to pretend that these things are painless. It asks whether Christ is sufficient within them.
That is also the question posed by Le Feuvre’s novel. Hope begins with a smooth road and a restless heart. She gradually encounters a rougher road on which peace becomes possible because her trust is no longer placed entirely in favourable circumstances.
The final stanza looks beyond earthly struggle:
It is enough: earth’s struggles soon shall cease,
And Jesus call us to Heaven’s perfect peace.
Bickersteth wrote those words beside a dying relative. Le Feuvre later placed them within the story of a young woman learning how to live. In both settings, they point towards the same Christian hope: peace is not secured by arranging life so that nothing painful can happen. It is found in belonging to the One who remains trustworthy through every part of the road.
Sources Consulted:
- The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: “Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin”
- Hymnary: “Peace, Perfect Peace” text and tune information
- Praise Trust: “Peace, Perfect Peace” and the tune PAX TECUM