The rise of women hymn-writers came simultaneously with the great spiritual revival which swept over America and evangelical Europe in successive tidal waves from 1800 to 1875. In Sweden the religious renaissance received its first impulse, no doubt, from Lutheran Germany. However, the Wesleyan movement in England and America also began to make its influence felt in wider circles, and the coming to Stockholm of such a man as George Scott, an English Methodist, gave added impetus to the evangelical movement which was already under way. Carl Olof Rosenius, Sweden's greatest lay preacher and the most prominent leader in the Pietistic movement in that country, was one of Scott's disciples, although he remained faithful to the Lutheran doctrine and a member of the Established Church to the close of his life. It was in the midst of the Rosenius movement that Lina Sandell became known to her countrymen as a great song-writer. She was born October 3, 1832, at Froderyd, her father being the parish pastor at that place. She was a frail child who preferred to spend her hours in her father's study rather than join her comrades in play. When she was twenty-six years old, she accompanied him on a journey to Gothenburg, but they never reached their destination. At Hastholmen the vessel on which they sailed gave a sudden lurch and the father fell overboard, drowning before the eyes of his devoted daughter. This tragedy proved a turning point in Lina Sandell's life. In the midst of her grief she sought comfort in writing hymns. Her songs seemed to pour forth in a steady stream from the depths of a broken heart. Fourteen of her hymns were published anonymously the same year (1858) in a Christian periodical, _Budbararen_. Although she lived to write 650 hymns in all, these fourteen from the pen of the grief-stricken 26-year-old girl have retained a stronger hold on the hearts of her countrymen than most of her later productions. Among these "first-fruits" born in sorrow are such hymns as: "Saviour, O hide not Thy loving face from me," "Others He hath succored," and Children of the heavenly Father Safely in His bosom gather; Nestling bird nor star in heaven Such a refuge e'er was given. The remarkable popularity which Lina Sandell's hymns attained within a comparatively short time was due to a large extent to the music written for them by Oskar Ahnfelt, a "spiritual troubadour" of his day. Ahnfelt not only possessed the gift of composing pleasing melodies that caught the fancy of the Swedish people, but he traveled from place to place throughout the Scandinavian countries and sang them to the accompaniment of a guitar. Miss Sandell once said: "Ahnfelt has sung my songs into the hearts of the people."