“SAVED ALONE.”
That was the telegram that Anna Spafford sent from Cardiff to her husband Horatio, back home in Chicago, on a day in late November, 1873. Horatio Spafford wasn’t idling, and he wasn’t preoccupied with high-stakes business, either. His fortunes in real estate investments had met disaster in the Great Chicago Fire, in 1871. He was fighting to get his family afloat again, so he had to attend to zoning reviews and suchlike. So he sent his wife and their four daughters ahead on a ship to England, planning to meet them later on. It was a trip they had planned to go on before the fire struck. He also hoped to assist his friend, the evangelist and school-builder Dwight L. Moody, who was making his way through the country to preach and to raise money for the work of the Lord. The ship was named the Ville du Havre — a bitterly ironic name, because it never would reach any harbor. On November 22, it was struck by an iron-clad ship on the high seas, and more than two hundred of its passengers and sailors perished. Those included all four of the Spafford children.
And that is why Anna Spafford sent that telegram. And that is when Horatio Spafford, sailing to England to meet Anna, wrote our Hymn of the Week, also known as “When Peace, Like a River.” His moral courage is, in my eyes, so remarkable, I hardly can begin to imagine it. For as his ship passed the area where the disaster had occurred, he took out a sheet of letterhead from his Chicago firm, and in a hand that looks like the dashing of a man in the straits of tremendous feeling, he wrote the first four stanzas that you can read below. He wasn’t just reaching for a poetic image when he wrote about the billows rolling, and the storms and the clouds; they were in his midst, right before his eyes, and waves of the ocean had covered over his four dear daughters.
The melody for the hymn was composed by another friend of Moody’s, Philip Bliss, a prolific author of song books, most of them sacred songs, and the collaborator with Ira Sankey in the superb Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs. He too met disaster. He and his wife were passengers on a train in Ohio, on their way to meet — who else? — Reverend Moody, when a bridge the train was crossing, at Ashtabula, collapsed under its weight, killing 92 people, including Mr. and Mrs. Bliss. Their two little boys survived them.
In this hymn, melody and passion and meaning unite as well as in any hymn I know. Spafford knows a foretaste of the peace that passeth understanding: he knows it, because he considers what Christ did for him, dying upon the Cross, and what Christ has promised him. He wrote to Anna from Chicago, saying that their children were already enjoying the peace and the bliss that they would someday enjoy, and with them, too. That wasn’t sentimentality. It was a real apprehension of a real thing: for one promise of God is more real than all the buildings and the ships and the bridges and the railroads of man, in all the centuries of his existence, combined. You get that sense from the melody, especially in the refrain, which passes from the quiet and the soothing, to the soaringly triumphant.
The Lord has risen, and has appeared to Simon. He has promised, and we trust in him. It is well, it is well indeed.
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul. Refrain: It is well (it is well), with my soul (with my soul), 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. Refrain. 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! Refrain. For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live: If Jordan above me shall roll, No pain shall be mine, for in death as in life Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul. Refrain. 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, Even so, it is well with my soul. Refrain.
For today we have the three tenors, with choral and orchestral accompaniment, performing our hymn in Bath, UK, 2003.
Word & Song is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions.
Crying...thank you for the tears. My mom loved Pavarotti; she had such incredibly excellent taste in music, though her education in poverty only went to 7th grade. There are other sorrows of losing children to things other than death. Please pray for us too. I'm so grateful for you and Tony!
Poetry and Music the twin fires of the soul.