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Artist
Helen Howarth Lemmel was born in England in 1863, into the home of a Wesleyan minister who immigrated to America when Helen was a child. She loved music, and her parents provided the best vocal teachers they could find. Eventually Helen returned to Europe to study vocal music in Germany. In time, she married a wealthy European, but he left her when she became blind, and Helen struggled with multiple heartaches during midlife.At age 55, Helen heard a statement that deeply impressed her: "So then, turn your eyes upon Him, look full into His face and you will see that the things of earth will acquire a strange new dimness." “I stood still,” Helen later said, “and singing in my soul and spirit was the chorus, with not one conscious moment of putting word to word to make rhyme, or note to note to make melody. The verses were written the same week, after the usual manner of composition, but nonetheless dictated by the Holy Spirit.” Pastor Doug Goins of Palo Alto, California, and his parents, Paul and Kathryn Goins, both 82, of Sun City, Arizona, knew Helen in Seattle. “she was advanced in years and almost destitute, but she was an amazing person,” said Doug. “She made a great impression on me as a junior high child because of her joy and enthusiasm. Though she was living on government assistance in a sparse bedroom, whenever we’d ask how she was doing, she would reply, ‘I’m doing well in the things that count.’” One day, the Goins invited her to supper. “We had never entertai