Hymn Stories: Number 2

Hymn Stories: Number 2. In document ‘Number 1’ we considered two very popular hymns, ‘What a friend we have in Jesus’ and ‘How great Thou art’. In this document, we will delve a little into the background to the writing of two other fairly well-known hymns. The title of our first hymn is ‘It is well with my soul’,1 which was written in 1873 by Horatio Gates Spafford. Briefly the story is as follows. Horatio Spafford was born in 1828 in New York.2 As well as being a very successful lawyer and businessman,3 Mr Spafford was a devout Christian, and he ran a large Bible class in a Presbyterian church of Chicago. It was in his Bible class that he first met a beautiful young Norwegian girl, Anna Larssen,4 who he later married.5 Horatio Anna Their early married life was spent in a large gabled cottage on the north side of Chicago.6 For the next ten years, life was very pleasant for them, and by 1871 they had added a son and four lovely daughters to their home. Horatio Junior Mr Spafford was a close friend (and generous supporter) of the American evangelist D. L. Moody. 1 Mr Moody once told of the time the two older girls, Annie and Maggie, ‘expressed their wish to join the church. This was an unusual request for such young children, and Mr. Moody thought them too young to understand. So he took them aside and separately questioned them concerning the dogmas of the church and their obligations as members of the Christian community. Then he led them to the minister. "These children know more than I do", Mr. Moody said’.7 But in short succession Horatio and Anna Spafford met with three great tragedies. First, sometime early in that year their little boy, named Horatio after both his father and grandfather, died. And then, in the October of that same year, Mr Spafford’s material wealth was consumed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Having invested heavily in land and property in the downtown area of expanding Chicago,8 he lost everything overnight. But … the worst was yet to come! Two years later, Anna’s doctor advised Horatio, for the benefit of Anna’s health, ‘to take the entire family on a trip to Europe’.9 Reservations were made on a large French liner, the Ville du Havre. But ‘just before they left Chicago’, critical business matters compelled Mr Spafford to delay his own passage, and so Anna sailed with their four daughters, eleven-year-old Annie, nine-year-old Maggie, five-year-old Bessie, and two-year-old Tanetta, assured that he would follow them within days.10 It is not difficult to trace God’s hand behind these circumstances. For, had Mr Spafford been on the liner, he would likely have drowned along with the majority of the passengers. The liner sailed on 15 November 1873. But in the early hours of 22 November (just one week later), the ship collided with an iron sailing vessel in mid-Atlantic ocean, and sank in just twelve minutes.11 2 Almost three-quarters of the passengers and crew died.12 But, remarkably, Anna Spafford was one of the few passengers who survived. This was an amazing story in itself; ‘she had been rolled under and down, and as she rose unconscious to the surface a plank floated under her, saving her life’.13 A daughter of Horatio and Anna (Bertha, born several years after the death of their four earlier daughters) recorded that: ‘Aboard the Ville du Havre, just before sailing time, for no reason he could ever determine, Father went to the purser and asked to have the two cabins that Mother … and the four children were to occupy changed to two others more toward the bow of the ship. He said afterward that he fought against the conviction that he must change them, not wishing to be troublesome, and also because he had no real complaint to make. He had chosen them himself, carefully, weeks before. ‘But the feeling was so strong that he could not throw it off, and at almost the last minute he changed the rooms. …The Ville du Havre had been struck on the starboard athwart the mainmast. The staterooms Father had insisted on changing were the first to catch the crushing blow of the iron ship, and their unfortunate occupants were the first on the Ville du Havre to die’.14 Had Mr Spafford not secured the change of cabins, Anna would have been in one of the crushed cabins. But, tragically, unlike their mother, the four girls drowned. Along with other survivors, Anna was brought on board a ‘stout little sailing vessel’15 to my home city16 in South Wales, UK. And it was from there that she cabled a heart-rending telegraph message to her husband.17 The first two words said it all … ‘Saved alone’. Bertha later recorded: ‘The cable arrived … All that night, with Major Whittle and another devoted friend beside him, Father walked the floor in anguish. Major Whittle said that toward morning Father turned to him. "I am glad to trust the Lord when it will cost me something", he said. He cabled Mother that … he would join her as soon as he could cross the Atlantic’.18 3 Mr Spafford left on the next available ship. Bertha records that, midway across the ocean, ‘the captain called Father into his private cabin. "A careful reckoning has been made", he told (him), "and I believe we are now passing the place where the Ville du Havre was wrecked"’.19 A few days later, Mr Spafford wrote to Anna’s half-sister, ‘On Thursday last we passed over the spot where she went down, in mid-ocean, the water three miles deep. But I do not think of our dear ones there. They are safe, folded, the dear lambs, and there, before very long, shall we be too. In the meantime, thanks to God, we have an opportunity to serve and praise Him for His love and mercy to us and ours. I will praise Him while I have my being’.20 God, give me just a few ounces of this man’s faith and courage! ‘On the high seas’, Bertha added, ‘near the place where his children perished, he wrote the hymn21 that was to give comfort to so many’.22 The original four verses of that hymn were written on the front of a sheet of paper which he had been given in a hotel just around the corner from his office in Chicago.23 These are the words which Mr Spafford wrote on that sheet of paper:24 When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know, It is well, it is well with my soul. Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, Let this blest assurance control, That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate, And hath shed His own blood for my soul. My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious thought— My sin, not in part but the whole, Is nailed to His cross, and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul. And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight, The clouds be rolled back as a scroll; The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend, 4 A song in the night,25 oh my soul. In the front of the Bible which Anna had given him on the Christmas before the disaster which robbed them of their four daughters, he later wrote the words of John 13 verse 7, ‘Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter’.26 The loss of their four precious daughters was not to be the last tragedy which Horatio and Anna Spafford were to suffer. Anna later gave birth to three more children, but the first of these (born almost three years to the day after the sinking of the Ville du Havre, and their only living son, named, as their earlier son, after his father) died of scarlet fever before he reached the age of four. The young lad’s full name was Horatio Goertner Spafford; he was born on 16 November 1876 and died on 11 February 1880. Bertha recorded, ‘Mother never spoke of little Horatio's death. It was a blow that time never softened. She could not go to the cemetery’.27 ‘Among my treasures’, Bertha added, ‘is a little cardboard box found in Father's desk after his death in Jerusalem. In it are some faded flowers bound with white ribbon and the words: "Flowers from little Horatio's funeral". He brought this with him to Jerusalem when so little was taken. No one knew how deep was the grief he and Mother shared’.28 In August of the following year, Mr and Mrs Spafford emigrated to Jerusalem.29 There, in spite of much opposition and many malicious lies told against them,30 they did a tremendous work, establishing a community of believers which became known for its generous hospitality, visiting the sick, and providing help and shelter for the poor and needy – without regard to race, religion or nationality.31 ‘The American Colony’ Our story ends when Horatio Spafford died of malaria on 16 October 1888, just a few days short of 60 years of age. Pending the resurrection, Mr Spafford’s remains lie now in a shared grave.

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