Horatio Spafford

1828–1888AmericanPresbyterian

Wrote 'It Is Well with My Soul' crossing the Atlantic over the water where his four daughters had drowned.

Summary

Horatio Spafford lived 1828–1888, and was American. This wing places Horatio Spafford in The Missionary Century, 1790–1910.

Lived 1828–1888, American.
Stood in The Missionary Century (1790–1910).
Hangs on The Hymn Writers.
Tradition: Presbyterian.

The life

Horatio Spafford was a Chicago lawyer, a Presbyterian elder, and a friend of D. L. Moody. In 1871 his four-year-old son died of scarlet fever, and months later the Great Chicago Fire wiped out the property he had invested in. In November 1873 he sent his wife Anna and their four daughters ahead to Europe on the steamer Ville du Havre, meaning to follow; the ship was struck by an iron sailing vessel in the mid-Atlantic and sank in twelve minutes. All four girls drowned. Anna's cable from Wales read: saved alone.

Crossing to meet her, Spafford was told by the captain when they passed near the place where the ship went down, and there he wrote the lines about peace like a river. Philip Bliss set them to music. The Spaffords later lost a son as well, left a church that suggested their griefs were divine punishment, and moved to Jerusalem in 1881, where the colony they founded ran soup kitchens and a hospital. He died there of malaria in 1888.

What was happening while he lived7 moments · 1790–1910

1825George Müller is convertedA German student with a record of lying and petty theft went along to a small Saturday prayer meeting in a private house in Halle, mostly out of curiosity. He walked out changed, and spent the next seventy years proving in public that God answers prayer.
1840Livingstone sails, and the Burmese Bible is doneDavid Livingstone, a Scottish mill worker who studied medicine at night, left London in December for southern Africa; he had wanted China, but a war closed it and Robert Moffat's talk of "the smoke of a thousand villages" turned him south. That same year Judson finished revising his Burmese Bible, first completed in 1834, twenty-one years after he landed.
1854Hudson Taylor lands at ShanghaiHe was twenty-one, under-funded, and arrived in the middle of a civil war. Within a few years he had done what no missionary did, put on Chinese dress and gone inland, away from the treaty ports and the protection of gunboats.
1859The '59 Revival, and Spurgeon's foundation stoneAwakening ran through Ulster and Wales after a season of prayer meetings begun in New York two years earlier; contemporaries counted converts in the tens of thousands, though the figures were estimates made in the moment. In August the foundation stone was laid for Charles Spurgeon's Metropolitan Tabernacle, which opened in 1861 and seated around five thousand.
1865The China Inland Mission and the Salvation ArmyIn June, walking the beach at Brighton in anguish over inland China, Taylor wrote in his Bible that he was asking God for twenty-four workers, a mission that would ask no one but God for money. The same summer William and Catherine Booth opened a mission in London's East End; it took the name Salvation Army in 1878.
1873Livingstone dies on his kneesHe was found on the morning of May 1 at Chitambo's village, kneeling by his bed. His African companions Chuma and Susi buried his heart under a tree, dried his body, and carried it roughly a thousand miles to the coast so England could bury him in Westminster Abbey.
1885The Cambridge SevenSeven young men from Britain's most privileged circles, including the cricketer C. T. Studd, gave up sport, money, and careers and sailed for China with the Inland Mission. Their farewell tour of the universities sent a wave of students into missions on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Missionary Century: the whole era→

Go further

Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.

Search Horatio Spafford at the Internet Archive · every work MannaFest cites

Why this one hangs here

Wrote 'it is well with my soul' on the deck of a ship crossing the exact water where his four daughters had drowned.

Hangs on The Hymn Writers: The poets who taught the church to sing what it believes.

Standing beside himThe Missionary Century · 29 on this stretch of wall

William Carey1761–1834

A village cobbler who expected great things from God, attempted great things for God, and opened the missions era.

Adoniram Judson1788–1850

Survived Burma's death prisons and buried his family there to give the Burmese the Bible they still read.

George Müller1805–1898

Housed ten thousand orphans in Bristol and never asked anyone but God for a penny.

David Livingstone1813–1873

Walked Africa open for the gospel, shamed the slave trade in print, and died on his knees.

William Booth1829–1912

Built an army out of the people no church wanted, with soup, soap, and salvation.

Hudson Taylor1832–1905

Wore Chinese dress, went inland where almost no missionary of his day would go, and asked God for the money instead of asking men.