Martin Luther, Joseph Scriven, Horatio Spafford, their hymns born out of suffering

 ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God’, ‘What A Friend We Have In Jesus’ and ‘It Is Well With My Soul’ are surely three of Christendom’s most loved hymns.

Millions upon millions of spirits have soared high with these songs – and yet.

Each hymn was born out of tragedy.

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

Both the words and the music for ‘A Mighty Fortress’ were written by Martin Luther around 1527 – 1528. It was a dark time in his life.

Two of his friends were martyred for the Reformed faith. Georg Winkler, a priest, was murdered ‘probably at the Archbishop’s behest’[i]; Leo Kaiser was burnt at the stake in Bavaria.

In these months too there was the wearying controversy among the Reformers over Holy Communion. Luther believed that the real presence of Christ was there in the sacraments because Jesus said, ‘This is my body’, ‘This is my blood.’ Zwingli said ‘is’ meant ‘signify’. Luther refused to back down on this. For him both Scripture was at stake; and the sanctity of the physical. Zwingli’s people became insulting, saying Luther worshipped a ‘baked God’. The argument dragged on, and dragged Luther’s spirits down.

Then the plague came to Wittenberg. Many left the town, but Luther stayed to care for the sick – at great risk to his own family. Indeed his home became a sort of hospital. People, known and loved by Luther died there – including his secretary. Luther’s son, Hans became sick, not eating for days on end. Hans survived; however Luther’s first daughter, born sickly in December 1527 did not. Elizabeth died in May 1528.

Luther did not rise up to meet all of this with a joyful hallelujah; he sank under the blows of an enemy that had assaulted him since his teenage years – he called it ‘Anfechtungen’. The word means trials, tribulation, depression. For Luther this was no minor mood swing. He felt assailed by demons, even Satan himself, his faith in Christ sickening to death.

He wrote to Melanchthon:

‘I have been tossed to and from in death and in hell so that I am still drained of all strength in my body and am trembling in all my limbs. I have lost Christ completely and have been shaken by the floods and storms of despair and blasphemy’.

And yet – in the midst of this great grief and depression, meditating on Psalm 46,  Luther wrote the music and words for ‘A Mighty Fortress’.

The fierceness of the battle is easily discerned in the words. Here is the first verse –

A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing:
Our helper He, amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing.
For still our ancient foe
Doth seek to work his woe;
His craft and power are great,
And armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.

Luther’s grief for his martyred friends and the dears one lost to the plague is seen in the last verse:

Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also:
The body they may kill:
God's truth abideth still,
His kingdom is for ever.

Luther lost his friends, his daughter, but he endured, he kept his eyes above the waves of sorrow that bore down on him, and seeing so little through the glass he was still able to pen words that have inspired millions.

What A Friend We Have In Jesus

Like Luther, Joseph Scriven (1819 – 1886) also suffered from depression. Indeed it seems the malady played a part in his death.

Here is what happened. News came to one of Scriven’s good friends, James Sackville, that Scriven was not well. Sackville went and found him and brought him to his own house in Bewdley, near Rice Lake, Canada. Scriven was a sick man, ‘prostrate in mind and body'.

Sackville writes -

We left him about midnight. I withdrew to an adjoining room, not to sleep, but to watch and wait. You may imagine my surprise and dismay when on visiting the room I found it empty. All search failed to find a trace of the missing man, until a little after noon the body was discovered in the water nearby, lifeless and cold in death.

This was August 10^th, 1886. Scriven was 66 years old.

The coroner saw no reason to order an inquest and while some have suggested suicide, it is more likely the depressed man could not sleep, and so went for a walk in the dark where he slipped and drowned in a deep mill pond near Sackville’s house.

As a young man, Scriven’s life was full of promise. From a well to do military family in Ireland, he received a good education at Trinity College, Dublin. He then attended a military college in Addiscombe, England. A career with the East India Company beckoned; but Scriven was not physically fit enough for a soldier’s life, so in the early 1840s he resigned and returned to Dublin. Here he worked as a private tutor. It was around this time that Scriven became committed to the Plymouth Brethren, a devout but separatist Christian group.

Three times married life was snatched from Joseph Scriven. The first, in 1843, was particularly cruel. It was the eve of his wedding and he was waiting for his fiancé near the river Bann. Coming over the bridge she fell from her horse into the river and drowned. A few years later, still working as a tutor, Scrivener fell in love with a Miss Falconer. The love was unrequited. She gave her heart to a rival. After this Scrivener emigrated to Canada and settled in the Lake Rice area. Here he was very involved with the Plymouth Brethren. Still a private tutor, he courted the niece of a family he was working for. Again tragedy struck. His new fiancé, Eliza Roche, just twenty-two years old, already had consumption. Because of her engagement to Scriven she decided to leave the Church of England and join the Plymouth Brethren. This meant being baptised by full immersion. The baptism happened in the icy waters of Lake Rice in April 1860. Eliza Roche developed pneumonia and died in August.

It was probably for the best that Scriven never married. Most wives would have found his attitude to money distressing. He gave it away to the poor. And most of his possessions. Someone who knew him wrote, ‘He has been known to divest himself of his own clothing, in order to cover the nakedness and relieve the sufferings of destitute ones.’ Another wrote, ‘He would keep only what he barely needed for his necessities.’

So it was that when news came that his mother was dying in Ireland, Scriven had no money to to travel to be with her and so to comfort her for her onward journey.

But he was able to send her a poem.

Million upon millions can quote the first verse by heart

What a Friend we have in Jesus,
  All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
  Everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
  O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
  Everything to God in prayer!

One writer about Scriven’s life thinks that the poem (originally titled ‘Pray Without Ceasing’) was made public by his mother in Ireland; another says a friend, possibly James Sackville, persuaded Scriven to have the poem published in a local paper in Canada. Once in the public domain the composer Charles C. Converse set it to music – and then it came the attention of Ira Sankey, the musician who ministered with D.L. Moody the evangelist. Sankey managed to include the new song into his new hymn book just before it went to the press.

And so the hymn, born out of suffering, came to the world. It has never left.

It Is Well With My Soul

Horatio Spafford[ii] (1828 – 1888) was no former monk like Luther or a destitute tutor like Scriven. He was a prosperous Chicago lawyer and businessman, an elder of the Presbyterian church, a friend and supporter of D. L Moody.

But like Luther and Scriven, he knew suffering.

From the early 1870’s Spafford’s business investments began to melt away, mainly because of the fire that destroyed much of Chicago in 1871, including properties he had invested in. Spafford began the decade holding back creditors.

Much worse was to follow.

On November 15^th 1873 Horatio Spafford’s wife Anna, and their four daughters, Anna (aged 11), Margaret (aged 9), Elizabeth (aged 8) and Tanetta (aged 2) boarded the SS Ville Du Havre bound for Europe. This was for a long-planned holiday in England. There would be sight-seeing and the family would also support D. L Moody who was holding evangelistic meetings there. Horatio was due to travel with his family, but because of business, he decided to remain behind and join them later.

At 2.00 a.m. on the morning of 22^nd November the SS Ville Du Havre collided with the iron clipper Loch Earn. The Ville Du Havre was almost split in two. There was pandemonium on deck as over 300 passengers rushed for the life-boats. For most it was a lost cause. The life-boats had been freshly painted and were stuck to the deck, two others were smashed when the ship’s masts collapsed onto them. And there was no time. The ship sank in twelve minutes. 226 passengers and crew perished, including all four of Hotario Spafford’s daughters.

Anna survived. She was found floating unconscious on a piece of wood, and was picked up by the Loch Earn. Along with 87 other survivors she was brought to Cardiff, Wales. From here she sent a telegram to her husband, ‘Saved alone, what shall I do…’.

Horatio immediately set out to bring his wife home. During the crossing the captain called Spafford to his cabin to tell him the ship was passing over the spot where his four daughters had drowned.

Spafford returned to his own cabin to write.

He wrote this to his half-sister Rachel:

‘On Thursday last we passed over the spot where she went down, in mid-ocean, the waters three miles deep. But I do not think of our dear ones there. They are safe, folded, the dear lambs’.

He also wrote a poem. Here is the opening verse, with its reference to ‘sorrows like sea billows’.

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know^a
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

The poem has five more verses. Spafford could have looked down at his daughters’ watery grave. He chose to look up, and so in verse five we have, ‘The sky, not the grave, is our goal’.

And for the night of grief that had swept over his life, we have the last verse.

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,
A song in the night[iii], oh my soul!

The poem was set to music by Philip Bliss, and like Scriven’s ‘What A Friend We Have In Jesus’ it came to the public when it was published by Ira Sankey. And there it has remained, an ongoing reminder for the Christian to trust in the sovereignty of God.

A mystery. A lesson

These are just three famous hymns born out of personal tragedy. No doubt there are many more. The background to these hymns takes us to a mystery we can never understand and teaches a lesson we can all understand.

The mystery is that great spiritual strength and beauty is entwined with suffering. This does not give any answer to the old conundrum of an all-powerful God and human anguish. It is just there, impossible to deny when you consider these three hymns.

The lesson, easy to understand, is to choose to trust God and his goodness, however fierce the storm. In the midst of martyrdoms, sickness, death, and depression this is what Martin Luther did, he preached to his own soul – ‘A mighty fortress is our God’. This is what Joseph Scriven did, broken hearted and penniless, unable to be with his mother, he remembered that Jesus was able to carry all his sorrow, all his griefs. This is what Horatio Spafford did sitting in his cabin, looking at the pitiless waves that a few days earlier had swallowed up his four children. He remembered that because of the cross, he and his family were destined for eternal life. And so, ‘whatever my lot…it is well with my soul.’

All three men could have given up, all three could have listened to Job’s wife and cursed God, or – as the atheist does – deny God. Instead they chose to keep on believing.

And so we have three wonderful hymns.

Tom Hawksley
April, 2020

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[i] The details here are from ‘Martin Luther’, Eric Metaxas, Viking 2017.

[ii] This essay just looks at Horatio Spafford in connection with this famous hymn. He and his wife are also well known for starting what some would call early charismatic meetings in Chicago after separating from the Presbyterian church, and for founding the American Colony in Jerusalem. This is where Horatio died, struck down by malaria just before his sixtieth birthday.  

[iii] The last line was later changed to ‘Even so it is well with my soul.’