When Mr. Moody and I were hold­ing meet­ings in Ed­in­burgh, in 1874, we heard the sad news of the loss of the French steam­er, “Ville de Havre,” on her re­turn from Amer­i­ca to France, with a large num­ber of mem­bers of the Ecu­men­i­cal Coun­cil, whose meet­ings had been held in Phil­a­del­phia. On board the steam­er was a Mrs. Spaf­ford, with her four child­ren. In mid-ocean a col­li­sion took place with a large sail­ing ves­sel, caus­ing the steam­er to sink in half an hour. Near­ly all on board were lost. Mrs. Spaff­ord got her child­ren out of their berths and up on deck. On be­ing told that the ves­sel would soon sink, she knelt down in pray­er, ask­ing God that they might be saved if pos­si­ble; or be made will­ing to die, if that was his will. In a few min­utes the ves­sel sank to the bot­tom of the sea, and the child­ren were lost. One of the sail­ors of the vessel, named Lock­urn—whom I af­ter­ward met in Scot­land—while row­ing over the spot where the ves­sel dis­ap­peared, dis­cov­ered Mrs. Spaf­ford float­ing in the wa­ter. Ten days lat­er she was land­ed at Car­diff, Wales. From there she ca­bled her hu­sband, a lawy­er in Chic­a­go, the mess­age, “Saved alone;” Mr. Spaf­ford, who was a Christ­ian, had the mess­age framed and hung up in his of­fice. He start­ed im­me­di­ate­ly for Eng­land to bring his wife to Chi­ca­go. Mr. Moo­dy left his meet­ings in Ed­in­burgh and went to Li­ver­pool to try to com­fort the be­reaved par­ents, and was great­ly pleased to find that they were able to say: “It is well; the will of God be done.”

In 1876, when we re­turned to Chi­ca­go to work, I was en­ter­tained at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Spaf­ford for a num­ber of weeks. Dur­ing that time Mr. Spaf­ford wrote the hymn, “It is well with my soul,” in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the death of his child­ren. P. P. Bliss com­posed the mu­sic and sang it for the first time at a meet­ing in Far­well Hall. The com­fort­ing fact in con­nect­ion with this in­ci­dent was that in one of our small meet­ings in North Chi­ca­go, a short time pri­or to their sail­ing for Eur­ope, the child­ren had been con­vert­ed.

While still liv­ing in Chi­ca­go, Mr. and Mrs. Spaf­ford be­came much in­ter­est­ed in the se­cond Com­ing of Christ. So zeal­ous did Mr. Spaf­ford be­come that he de­cid­ed to go to Je­ru­sa­lem with his wife and the one re­main­ing daugh­ter, and there await the com­ing of the Lord. Mr. Spaf­ford died there not along af­ter­ward. Mrs. Spaf­ford is the head of a so­ci­e­ty whose head­quar­ters are in a large build­ing out­side of Je­ru­sa­lem, where a a large num­ber of peo­ple live, hav­ing all things in com­mon.

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