A meditation on Horatio G. Spafford’s “It is well” and a suggestion for a new last verse

1. 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 with my soul,
     It is well, it is well with my soul
2. 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.
3. My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!—
   My sin, not in part but the whole,
   Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
   Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
4. For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:
   If Jordan above me shall roll,
   No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life
   Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.
5. But, Lord, ’tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,
   The sky, not the grave, is our goal;
   Oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord!
   Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul!
6. 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.

   (added verse)

7. Though worm, flood or flame come to ravage this frame,
   Yet still shall this hope ever hold:
   In that my Saviour liveth and calleth my name —
   “It is well, it is well with thy soul!”

“It Is Well”: The Story Behind a Hymn Forged in Fire, Flood and Faith

Most people who know It Is Well with My Soul (also known as When Peace Like a River) know it as a hymn of serenity — a calm, steady declaration of trust in God. What far fewer people know is the story of the man who wrote it, and the extraordinary grief out of which those words were born.

Horatio Gates Spafford was a respected Chicago lawyer and a committed Christian layman. In the early 1870s, his life seemed secure: a thriving legal practice, a growing family, and deep involvement in the ministry of D. L. Moody. But in 1871, the Great Chicago Fire swept through the city and destroyed much of his property. It was a heavy blow, but not the end.

Two years later came the tragedy that would define his life. His wife Anna and their four daughters — Annie (11), Maggie (9), Bessie (7), and Tanetta (2) — boarded the S.S. Ville du Havre for a trip to Europe. Spafford, delayed by business, planned to follow shortly. Mid‑Atlantic, the ship collided with another vessel and sank within minutes. Anna survived. Their daughters did not.

Her telegram to him nine days later from Caerdydd contained only the words: “Saved alone, what shall I do?”

It was on the voyage to meet his grieving wife that Spafford wrote the words that would become his only hymn. He was not a poet by profession, nor a hymn writer by habit. He was simply a man standing in the ashes of his life, reaching for the one thing that had not been taken from him — the faithfulness of God. That single act of writing became, for him, a way of stitching his confidence in God back together. And in the decades that followed, those same words brought solace to millions who found themselves in their own valleys of loss.

Philip Bliss and the Naming of the Tune

The text alone did not make the hymn what it became. Its melody — the part that carries the words into the heart — was composed by Philip Paul Bliss, one of the most influential gospel musicians of the 19th century.

Bliss encountered Spafford’s text through the Moody–Sankey revival network. Deeply moved by the story of the shipwreck and the father who had lost four daughters, he set the words to a new tune of remarkable tenderness and strength.

He named the melody “Ville du Havre”, after the sunken vessel that carried Spafford’s daughters to their deaths. It was a gesture of compassion, a way of binding the music to the grief that inspired the text. The tune and the story became inseparable.

Tragically, Bliss himself died only a few years later in a train accident. Most of his manuscripts were destroyed in the fire that followed. It Is Well with My Soul is one of the few pieces of his work that survived — a hymn born of one disaster and preserved through another.

A Life Poured Out in Jerusalem

Spafford’s story did not end in despair. He and Anna later had three more children:

• Horatio Goertner Spafford (1875–1879)
• Bertha Spafford (1878–1968)
• Grace Spafford (1881–1954)

Seeking a new beginning, the family moved to Jerusalem in the 1880s and founded what became known as the American Colony. It was not a sect or a commune, but a community devoted to practical Christian charity.

Their work included:

• feeding the poor
• caring for orphans
• establishing hospitals and clinics
• offering relief during famine, war, and plague
• serving both Jews and Arabs without distinction

The Colony became famous for its neutrality, compassion, and integrity. During World War I, when Jerusalem was ravaged by hunger and disease, the American Colony became one of the city’s most important humanitarian lifelines.

After Spafford’s death, the work continued under Anna and later under their daughter Bertha. The American Colony eventually evolved into a cultural and philanthropic institution, and part of its property became the American Colony Hotel, still renowned today for its hospitality and its role as a meeting place for diplomats, journalists, and peace negotiators.

What began in grief became a legacy of mercy.

A Modern Echo of Job

Spafford’s story has long reminded readers of the biblical figure Job. Both men endured losses that would have crushed most people. Both refused to let grief extinguish their trust in God. And both emerged with a deeper, quieter conviction that suffering does not have the final word.

Job’s great declaration — “I know that my Redeemer lives” — is the heartbeat of that conviction. It is the cry of a man who has lost everything yet still anchors his hope in the God who will one day stand upon the earth and make all things new.

Spafford never claimed such words for himself. His humility was too deep, his grief too honest. But the spiritual kinship is unmistakable. The hymn he wrote is, in its own way, a modern Job‑song: a testimony that faith can survive the storm, the fire, the worm, and the flood.

The added verse, drawing explicitly on Job 19, simply makes visible what was already there beneath the surface — the hope of resurrection, the certainty of redemption, and the deeply personal truth that God calls each of His people by name.

A Personal Reflection

The first time I ever heard this hymn was at the funeral of my great‑grandmother. I was not a believer at the time. I stood there as an outsider to the faith, listening to words that were not yet mine, sung by people whose hope I did not yet share. And yet It Is Well with My Soul, together with Henry Bickersteth’s Peace, perfect peace, somehow spoke to me that day with a clarity I could not explain.

Looking back, I can see that moment as part of the slow, patient work God does in the heart — the seeding and watering that He gives in His own way, at His own pace, as He calls each of His people to Himself. I did not understand it then, but something in those hymns lodged itself in me. Perhaps it was the honesty of them, the refusal to pretend that life is easy, the way they hold grief and hope in the same hand. Whatever it was, it stayed with me.

Since becoming a Christian, I have sung this hymn many times and in many languages. It has travelled with me through seasons of joy and seasons of sorrow. One of my favourite renditions is by Joni Eareckson Tada — another believer who has walked through deep tribulation and yet radiates a confidence that God’s will is best. When she sings It Is Well, the words carry the weight of a life lived under the sovereignty of God, and the sweetness of a faith that has learned to trust Him in the dark.

Perhaps that is why I feel such a personal connection to this hymn. It was there at the beginning of my journey, before I even knew I was on one. It has accompanied me since. And now, reflecting on the life of Horatio Spafford — a man who suffered more than most of us can imagine, and yet found a way to say “It is well” — I see more clearly why this hymn has endured.

It is not a song of triumph. It is not a song of denial. It is a song of trust — the trust of a modern Job, who knew that his Redeemer lives.

And so the final verse added here, echoing Job 19, is not an embellishment but a completion of that thought: that our Redeemer not only lives and shall stand upon the earth, but that He knows each of us by name, calls us by name, and assures us that in Him, all is well — and could not be more secure.