What a Friend We Have in Jesus: the hymn that was born from a letter to a sick mother

Twice death stepped between Joseph Scriven and the altar. The first time, the river took his fiancée on the very eve of the wedding. The second, years later and on another continent, pneumonia took the woman he hoped to start over with. Anyone else would have grown bitter forever. He, instead, did something different with his pain: he knelt down. And on his knees, writing a letter of comfort to his sick mother, he composed — without meaning to — one of the most sung songs in the history of Christianity: “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

The young Irishman who had it all

Joseph Medlicott Scriven was born in 1819 in Ireland, into a well-off family that gave him a careful education. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin and his future was all mapped out: he was engaged to the young woman he loved and dreamed of building a Christian home and making his way in life. He was a young believer, of sincere faith, to whom everything seemed to smile.

But life sometimes changes course in a single night. And his changed on the cruelest night possible.

The night before the wedding

On the eve of his marriage, his fiancée died drowned in a tragic accident. One day he was trying on the groom’s suit in his heart; the next, he was in mourning. Scriven was devastated. It was not only the loss of the woman he loved: it was the loss of the entire future they had planned together.

In the midst of that pain, the young Irishman did the only thing he knew how to do: turn to God. And he made a radical decision. At twenty-five he crossed the Atlantic and emigrated to Canada, seeking to start from zero far from the memories. He settled in Port Hope, a town in the province of Ontario, where he worked as a teacher and tutor.

The Good Samaritan of Port Hope

In Canada, Scriven adopted a lifestyle that many considered madness. Influenced by the Plymouth Brethren, he took the Sermon on the Mount as a literal rule of life: he sold his possessions, made a vow of simplicity, and devoted his time, his money, and even his own clothes to helping the poor, the sick, and the helpless. The neighbors of Port Hope called him “the Good Samaritan.”

They would see him in the streets with his saw and his sawhorse, cutting firewood. The anecdote is told that one day a rich man wanted to hire him to cut firewood at his house, and a friend of the rich man warned him: “He won’t cut firewood for you. He only cuts firewood for those who have no money to pay him.” He was a man who never refused to help anyone, even if some took him for an eccentric.

In Port Hope he fell in love again: Eliza Roche, a relative of one of the families he tutored. But tragedy struck a second time: Eliza fell ill with pneumonia and died before they could marry. Twice engaged. Twice in mourning. Scriven never thought of marriage again; instead, he gave himself completely to serving others and his Lord.

The letter that crossed the ocean

In 1855, ten years after leaving Ireland, news reached him that his mother was gravely ill. The man who had given up everything for the poor had no money to cross the ocean and be with her. What could a son do from so far away? The only thing within his reach: pray and write.

First he prayed, asking God for the right words. Then he took up his pen and wrote a letter of comfort to his mother, including a poem of three stanzas originally titled “Pray Without Ceasing.” It was not a text to publish, nor for anyone to sing: it was the long-distance embrace of a son who wanted to remind his sick mother that, even in loneliness and pain, she had a Friend who never fails. Every verse breathed what he himself had learned through life’s blows: that everything — guilt, sorrows, struggles — must be taken to God in prayer.

“The Lord and I did it together”

Years later, Scriven fell ill and a friend came to visit him in his humble room. Beside the bed, on a wrinkled sheet of paper, the visitor found those verses and, moved, asked him who had written them. Scriven answered with a humility that portrays him completely: “The Lord and I did it together.”

The poem began to circulate from hand to hand until someone took it to an editor. It appeared published anonymously in the collection Social Hymns, Original and Selected (1865), compiled by Horace Hastings, and later in Scriven’s own modest book, Hymns and Other Verses (1869). Nobody knew who the author of those comforting words was. The man who had written them kept cutting firewood for the poor of Port Hope, unaware that his private letter was about to become universal.

A lawyer gave it its melody

The music was still missing. And it came from the most unexpected hand: Charles Crozat Converse, an American lawyer and composer from Erie, Pennsylvania, born in 1832. Converse was an educated musician — he studied in Germany and wrote symphonies and oratorios — but his name would be engraved in history by a simple melody he composed in 1868 to clothe Scriven’s verses. He published it in 1870 in his collection Silver Wings, signing with the pseudonym Karl Reden. It was a warm melody, easy to sing, tailor-made for words that spoke of friendship with Jesus. (That tune, which in some hymnals appears under the name “Erie,” is the one we still hum today.)

From the revival campaigns to the whole world

The hymn found its great promoter in Ira D. Sankey, the musician of evangelist Dwight L. Moody’s campaigns. In 1875, Sankey included “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” as the last entry of his famous hymnal Gospel Hymns Number 1. He himself would later say: “The last hymn to go into the book became one of the first to win the public’s favor.” At first, by mistake, the lyrics were attributed to the Scottish hymn writer Horatius Bonar, who had to deny it; little by little the truth came out: the author was that quiet Irishman from Port Hope.

From the campaigns of Moody and Sankey, the song never stopped traveling. Missionaries took it to the four corners of the planet and it was translated into dozens of languages; in many mission fields it was one of the first songs new believers learned. Generations of Christians, in cathedrals and in huts, in stadiums and in neighborhood services, have found in it the same comfort Scriven wanted to give his mother: that in Jesus we have a friend who carries our burdens and hears our prayers.

The river that came back for him

The end of Joseph Scriven has a shuddering echo of the beginning of his story. In 1886, at the age of 66, he died accidentally by drowning in the Ganaraska River, in Port Hope: the same kind of death that had taken his first fiancée more than forty years earlier. The man who had comforted so many with his words left this world in silence, without riches or honors.

But Port Hope did not forget him. Its citizens raised a monument in his memory that can still be visited, with an inscription that sums up his legacy: there lies “the philanthropist and author of this great masterpiece, written in Port Hope.” The woodcutter who only worked for the poor turned out to be the author of one of the most beloved hymns of all time.

“What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” in our language

To the Spanish-speaking world the song came as “¡Oh, qué amigo nos es Cristo!”, and it has never stopped being sung since. It sounds in the Sunday services of our churches, in evangelistic campaigns, in family devotionals, and in moments of trial, when someone needs to remember they are not alone. It is one of those pieces that crosses generations: our grandparents sang it and our children sing it, with the same conviction.

Today it holds a place of honor among the Christian songs that have brought the most comfort to God’s people, and every time it sounds it takes us back to that humble room in Port Hope, to a son writing to his sick mother the one thing that truly matters.

What this story leaves us

There is a detail that says it all: Scriven never wanted to publish his poem. He was not looking for fame, nor royalties, nor recognition. He only wanted to comfort his mom. And yet, God took those words written in the intimacy of pain and turned them into a worldwide hymn. That is how God works with broken hearts that surrender to him: what is born of sincere prayer ends up blessing multitudes.

The next time we sing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” let us remember the man behind it: the Irishman who twice lost the love of his life, who gave away even his clothes to the needy, who cut firewood for free for the poor, and who, when he could not travel to see his sick mother, sent her by letter the most valuable thing he had: the certainty that in Jesus we have a friend who carries everything, hears everything, and sustains everything. Let us take everything to God in prayer. He, better than anyone, knew why he said it.