Horatio Gates Spafford planned a trip to Europe for his wife and family, but at the last minute he had to remain at home on business so he sent them on ahead. His wife, Anna Lawson Spafford, and their four daughters, Maggie, Tanetta, Annie, and Bessie, aged from 18 months to 12 years, embarked on the ship Ville du Havre in November 1873. Unfortunately the ship collided with an English sailing ship, the Loch Earn, off Newfoundland and sank within half an hour. Mrs. Spafford was rescued, but all four children were drowned, the baby being washed from her mother’s grasp. Ten days later, when the survivors were landed at Cardiff in Wales, she sent a cable to her anxious husband, “Saved alone.” Spafford sailed across the Atlantic to meet his wife, and both of them met the evangelist Dwight L. Moody in Liverpool. He comforted them in their tragic bereavement and noted their expression of trust and confidence in God in spite of their deep personal sorrow. “It is well,” they said, “the will of God be done.” Spafford had the cabled message framed and hung in his office, and on the occasion of Ira D. Sankey’s visit in 1876 again expressed his resignation to God’s will. It was then that he was inspired to his thoughts into verse, and this hymn was written two years after the tragedy.

One stanza is omitted in SDAH: 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.

The recurring theme recalls the incident of the Shunammite woman and Elisha and his servant: “Is it well with thee?… It is well” (2 Kings 4:26).

Spafford was born on October 20, 1828, at North Troy, New York. In 1856 he moved to Chicago, where he established a legal practice. An active Presbyterian, he was an elder in one of the churches in Chicago. He was also a Sunday school teacher and active in the YMCA. He and his wife were always interested in the Holy Land, settling in Jerusalem in 1881. They founded the American colony there. He died in Jerusalem on October 16, 1888.

The tune VILLE DU HAVRE, from the name of the ship, is also called IT IS WELL; it was composed especially for these words by Philip P. Bliss (1838-1876; see SDAH 286). It appeared in Gospel Hymns, No. 2, 1876, edited by Sankey and Bliss. Bliss also wrote the words and music of SDAH 286, “Wonderful Words of Life,” to an unnamed tune, and SDAH 343, “I Will Sing of My Redeemer.”

📖 Reference: Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White. Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1988.