What A Friend We Have In Jesus

What a Friend We Have in Jesus

Joseph Scriven was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1819.  In 1842 he graduated from Trinity College in Dublin.  The following year his fiancée accidentally drowned a few hours before their wedding.  In grief, he moved to Canada, in a little town called Port Hope, Ontario, where he tutored children and tried to live a quiet life of charity and Christian witness.  It was said that a person would be hard-pressed to find a person in the vicinity of Port Hope who had not had a conversation with Mr Scriven about his soul.  He seemed eccentric to many people, but was also very given to perform charitable works – often cutting firewood for widows or delivering milk for the elderly crippled with rheumatism.  He gave much of his clothes and money away to those in need – a practice he kept up with his entire life.

In 1855, when Joseph was about 35 years old, he got word that his mother was ill.  He was unable to visit, but penned a poem he called “Pray Without Ceasing” and sent it to her.  Unbeknown to him, his mother gave the poem to a friend who published it and set it to music.  It was published as “Author Unknown” under the title from the first line of the poem: “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

Joseph fell in love again, but again was taken by tragedy in 1860 when his intended, Miss Eliza Catherine Roche, died of Tuberculosis just prior to the wedding.

A short time prior to his death in 1896, a friend was sitting with him and came upon a copy of the hymn and read it to him.  Joseph said to him in amazement, “That’s the poem I wrote for my mother years ago!”  He had never intended it to go beyond her.

Shortly after then, Joseph passed away.  He was buried next to his lost love, Eliza, with his feet facing her so that at the Resurrection they would arise facing each other.

What a friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and griefs to bear!

What a privilege to carry, Everything to God in prayer!

Oh, what peace we often forfeit, Oh, what needless pain we bear.

All because we do not carry Everything to God in prayer.

Have we trials and temptations?  Is there trouble anywhere?

We should never be discouraged; Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Can we find a friend so faithful, Who will all our sorrows share?

Jesus knows our every weakness; Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Are we weak and heavy laden, Cumbered with a load of care?

Precious Savior still, our refuge, Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Do thy friends despise, forsake Thee?  Take it to the Lord in prayer.

In His arms He’ll take and shield thee; Thou wilt find a solace there.

Morgan, Robert J., Then Sings My Soul, Nelson Publishers, 2003.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_M._Scriven

https://www.stempublishing.com/hymns/biographies/scriven.html

David Livingstone

David Livingston

David Livingston was born in Scotland in 1813.  He was born in a building housing the families of workers of a cotton mill.  He grew, as expected, to work in that same cotton mill – often working 14 hour shifts as a child – but found time to study theology and science on weekends and evenings as he could find the time.  A faithful Congregationalist, he was moved as a young man by an appeal for medical missionaries.  He added medicine to the list of subjects he was studying.

At first he thought to go to China as a missionary, and was accepted by the London Missionary Society for this work.  The Opium Wars of 1839-1842 put an end to that dream, and he was persuaded by the great British Missionary Robert Moffatt to consider Africa as a mission field.  He accepted the call and arrived in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1841 at age 28 to support Rev Moffatt.  Within four years, David married his mentor’s daughter, Mary Moffatt.  They eventually had six children.  David grew restless tending mission stations on the coast, and developed a vision for exploring Africa, desiring to open “God’s Highway” – a planned 1,500 mile route to the interior of Africa to bring “Christianity and civilization” to unreached peoples.  During the course of his missions work, he traveled East to West across Africa, then back again, crossing the Kalahari Desert each way as well.  He was the first recorded European to find Lake Ngami and the beautiful Victoria Falls, which he named for his beloved Queen.

During his trips into the interior of Africa, Dr Livingston was exposed to the slave trade at its source, and was greatly burdened by it.  He wrote of the “inefficient” slave economy, desiring to replace it with the “efficient” economy of capitalism.  He hoped that developing a commercial economy would expose the slave trade to the world and cut off the slave trade at its source.

Dr Livingston spent the next 15 years exploring Africa, keeping detailed notes as to the geography, peoples, and landmarks he saw.  He was very faithful to report his detailed notes to his mission board and eventually returned home to a hero’s welcome in England, finding that the Society publishing the results of his exploration had turned him into a celebrity.  He published a book detailing his mission exploits, and made enough money from that book to fund the rest of his missions work.

He returned to Africa under the sponsorship of the Royal Geographic Society, with the stated desire of solving what was then one of the great mysteries of the world, finding the source of the Nile River.  Practically, he had hoped that this would inspire other British explorers and businessmen to follow his footsteps and begin to open up Africa to commercial and missions work and begin the construction of his “God’s Highway.”  It was during this trip that the extreme hardship resulted in the death of his wife, among many others in his entourage.

It was during this last journey that Dr Livingstone disappeared from the public eye.  Nothing was heard from him for two years – and his disappearance added to his mystique.  It was later learned that David had fallen gravely ill during that time.  In 1871, the New York Herald sent journalist Henry Stanley with instructions to locate Dr Livingstone and tell his story.  Stanley located him in the interior of Africa in October of that year, uttering the famous line (which he admitted to having rehearsed prior to meeting him), “Dr Livingston, I presume?”  Stanley brought food, supplies, and medicines, which had the effect of saving the life of David who was still very ill.

Stanley stayed with David for five months before returning to New York to publish the stories he had recorded.  Livingstone refused Stanley’s pleas to accompany him, insisting on the missions work yet to be done.  It was less than 2 years later, that Dr David Livingstone was found dead, kneeling by his cot in the posture of prayer.  His friends arranged for his body to be brought back to England, where he was buried in Westminster Abbey after an arduous nine-month journey, but they first removed his heart and buried them in Africa, in present-day Zambia.

David Livingstone came to Africa when it was called the “Dark Continent” or “The White Man’s Graveyard”.  Contemporary maps of Africa had large blank spots marked “unexplored”.  He suffered many hardships, including the death of his wife, desertion by many friends and fellow missionaries, his own illnesses, opposition from slave traders which sometimes physically threatened him, and the ever-present dangers of Africa – he was mauled by a lion once, which permanently damaged his left arm.  Despite this, he redrew the map of Africa, helped to expose the horrors of the slave trade for what it was in his day, and established many missions works in the interior of Africa.

His tombstone in Westminster Abbey reads, “Brought by faithful hands over land and sea, David Livingstone: missionary, traveler, philanthropist. For 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, and to abolish the slave trade.”  One present-day author likened him to a mixture of Mother Teresa, Neil Armstrong, and Abraham Lincoln.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/missionaries/david-livingstone.html

https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Livingstone/The-Zambezi-expedition