By John Ensor

I’d like to say a few things about the melodious life and the tragic death of Philip Bliss. You probably don’t recognize that name, but if you had lived 120-30 years ago, you would have known his name. Philip Bliss was a hymn and song writer of spiritual or gospel hymns in the period of time right after the Civil War, when we saw people like D.L. Moody begin to rise up in fame to become a worldwide evangelist. Wherever he went, he wanted people to sing new songs and it was Philip Bliss that helped write many of those songs that were sung during that period of time, many of which are still in our hymnals today. Philip Bliss is one of those people who helped people like me who are non-musical, can’t play an instrument, can’t read music, can’t sing very well. Nonetheless, Philip Bliss helped somebody like me still follow that biblical admonition that we greet one another with songs, hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord from our hearts. How do we do that? We do that in large part because we have gifts, people like Philip Bliss, Ira Sankey, and today many modern songwriters who are just continuing to pump out music that sets the soul to singing.

Well, let me tell you a little bit about Philip Bliss. He wrote several hymns that you probably recognize: “Wonderful Words of Life,” “Jesus Loves Even Me,” “I Will Sing of My Redeemer,” “Hallelujah, What a Savior,” and he wrote the music to my all-time favorite hymn, “It Is Well With My Soul.” Philip Bliss died very young at the age of 38 in a terrible train accident in Ashtabula, Ohio on December 29, 1876. He and his wife Lucy had just celebrated Christmas with their two young children. But the evangelist D.L. Moody had insisted that Bliss make the journey from where he lived up through Ohio and into Chicago and be with him for the end of the year worship services where Moody expected thousands and thousands of people to show up. He wanted Philip Bliss to be there to lead in the music and the singing. He agreed and they started their way on up to Chicago. In the city of Ashtabula, there was a train bridge crossing and as Philip Bliss’s train was going across it on December 29th in the middle of a snowstorm and blizzard, the whole bridge collapsed under the weight of the train. The whole thing came crashing down and because it was wintertime, each of these train cars had a little heater inside of them. When the train crashed, those burning coals caught fire, spreading through the cars and even the people who survived the 70 foot fall to the ground found themselves in the midst of a great fire. The fire grew so intense that the people were cremated, including Philip Bliss. Not a parcel of his body or his belongings survived. While some people survived, many were killed and some of them were completely cremated by the intense fire, including Philip and Lucy Bliss. Where that train had collapsed, all that’s left there are the wheels of the train, the girders of the bridge, and some of the steel components of the train. Everything else was completely burned up at the time. Today there is a memorial stone in a local cemetery that gives honor to all those who perished in this terrible accident. The most famous person among them was Philip Bliss and he was famous at the time because of the amazing hymns that he wrote. D.L. Moody spoke at his funeral and he said, “I loved him and admired him. He was raised up of God to write hymns for the Church of Christ as Charles Wesley was for the Church in an earlier age. As a writer and singer of gospel songs and with all his gifts, he was the most humble man I ever knew. I loved him as a brother and shall cherish his memory.” The reason that I admire Philip Bliss is that he was born in tremendous poverty, never saw a piano until he was 10 years old, left home at 11 to relieve the financial burden from his family, worked on farms, taught himself music, went to school on his own dime so to speak, learned how to write hymns and gave his life to writing them. Before he died he had sent ahead some of his luggage and in that luggage was the hymn, “I Will Sing of My Redeemer.” The thing that I love about Philip Bliss is that he always wrote his songs entirely focused on the Redeemer Jesus. He drew our attention to the blood of Jesus, the cross of Jesus, the ransom power of the gospel, which is the way we sustain our joy and endure in ministry. People sometimes ask me, “How can you go to all these places around the world and do it for so many decades?” My answer in part is because I’ve learned the secret of Ephesians chapter 5 to fill your heart with the Spirit of God, which produces a joy and a melodious spirit and this joy of the Lord is always our enduring strength. Thanks to Philip Bliss I am able to do that better as I get older.