“It is Well With My Soul”

Since the hymn’s history was memorably depicted in a Tabernacle Choir Christmas program a few years ago, I expect that most everybody out there already knows it.  Still, I think it’s worth revisiting, because it emerges from one of the most tragic backstories imaginable, which makes the lyrics (to me, at least) all the more powerful:

Horatio Spafford was a successful Chicago lawyer (and an elder in the Presbyterian Church) who had invested very significantly in area real estate.  Unfortunately, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was financially disastrous for him.  And then, as if that weren’t enough, the economic downturn of 1873 proved catastrophic to most of his remaining business interests.  So he determined to travel with his family to England in order to assist with a revivalist crusade that would be led by the famous American Protestant evangelist Dwight L. Moody, who was based in Chicago and who was a friend of the Spaffords.

Spafford booked passage on the SS Ville du Havre.  That French iron steamship had been launched at the end of 1865, originally under the name of Napoléon III.  In 1871, the Emperor having been deposed and the ship having been converted from a paddlewheel steamer to propulsion by a single prop, it was rechristened the Ville du Havre.

At the last minute, though, stubbornly persisting economic matters forced him to change his plans.  So he sent his Norwegian-born wife, Anna, on ahead of him, along with his four daughters, Annie (12), Maggie (7), Bessie (4), and Tanetta (eighteen months).

Tragically, however,  early on 22 November 1873 out on the cold North Atlantic, the Ville du Havre collided with a three-masted British clipper, the Loch Earn.  The severely damaged Ville du Havre sank in just twelve minutes.  Sixty-one passengers were saved, along with twenty-six crew members.  They were rescued by the Loch Earn and by a passing American vessel, the Tremountain.  But 226 passengers and crew died, including Horatio Spafford’s four daughters, Annie, Maggie, Bessie, and Tanetta.  His wife, Anna, survived.  Horatio received a telegram from her: “Saved alone . . .”.  Shortly thereafter, he himself sailed to England to join and comfort his grief-stricken wife.  As his own ship passed the approximate point where his four daughters had died in the frigid water, he felt inspired to write the words to “It is Well With My Soul.”  Originally, they read somewhat differently:

After the loss of their four girls, Anna would give birth to three more children — a son and two daughters.  The son died of scarlet fever in February 1880, at just four years of age.  (Are you beginning to think of the biblical book of Job?  I certainly am.)

In August of the following year, 1881, the Spaffords left America for a radically different life: They settled permanently in Jerusalem, which was still under the rule of the Ottoman Empire at the time.  (It was long before the establishment of the modern state of Israel.)

They founded a religious community there that was known as the American Colony, which remains an important element of East Jerusalem still today.  (During my first six-month residency in the city decades ago, I walked by it just about daily, without knowing very much of its history.)  There, they and those who joined them in their community engaged in philanthropic efforts among local Jews, Muslims, and Christians, establishing warm and trusting relationships with all three communities. (It was a simpler time, before the huge Jewish influx inspired by the rise of Zionism.)  Horatio Spafford died of malaria on 25 September 1888, at the age of 59. He is buried in Mount Zion Cemetery in Jerusalem.  Anna, his widow, lived on in Jerusalem until 1923

A curious footnote:  The Spaffords adopted a teenager there in Jerusalem who had been born to a family of Turkish Jews.  His name was Jacob Elias.  One day, when he was still a schoolboy, Jacob Elias discovered the important Siloam inscription (aka the “Silwan inscription” or “Shiloh inscription”).

So, as you can see, there are several very interesting stories that are connected in some way or other with “It is Well With My Soul.”

Here’s another one:  Horatio Spafford’s lyrics for “It is Well With My Soul” were set to music by an American composer and hymn writer named Philip Paul Bliss (1838-1876), who was another friend of Dwight Moody in Chicago.  The 1985 edition of the Latter-day Saint hymnal contains three hymns by Bliss: Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy (#335) (also known as Let the Lower Lights Be Burning); More Holiness Give Me (#131); and Should You Feel Inclined to Censure (#235), which features lyrics by an anonymous writer set to the same  tune as “Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy”).

On 29 December 1876, three years after the sinking of the Ville du Havre, Bliss and his wife, Lucy, were traveling on a Pacific Express train that was approaching Ashtabula, Ohio.  When the train was nearly across the bridge into Ashtabula, the bridge collapsed and the carriages fell into the ravine below.  Neither Philip Paul Bliss nor his wife was ever seen again.  He was thirty-eight years old.  Philip and Lucy Bliss left two sons behind them, George (four) and Philip Paul (0ne).  Ninety-two of the 159 passengers died in what is known as the “Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster.”

Remembering these stories will, I think, make the message of “It is Well With My Soul” all the more impactful.