What a Friend We Have in Jesus

About this hymn

Words

Joseph M. Scriven, written 1855, first published 1865

Music

CONVERSE, also called ERIE, by Charles C. Converse, 1868

Meter

8.7.8.7 D

In

159+ hymnals (Hymnary count needs a second check)

Scripture

Matthew 11:28-30, John 15:15, 1 Thessalonians 5:17

The story

Joseph Scriven wrote this in 1855 as a private poem for his mother. She was in Ireland and he was living in Canada, and he meant it to comfort her, not to be sung. It went into print in 1865 with no name on it, and he was not widely credited as the author until the 1880s. When a neighbor asked him about it, the line that comes down to us is that he and the Lord did it between them. Hymnary also ties the words to his grief after his second fiancee died. Charles Converse wrote the tune in 1868, and words and music were printed together in 1870. That is when it really spread.

Aretha Franklin recorded it on her 1972 album Amazing Grace, cut live at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles with Rev. James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir, and that slow, heavily ornamented, choir-answered reading is still the reference point for how this hymn gets treated in gospel.

Where it fits in a service

Often used as an altar call, a prayer hymn, or the song under a pastoral prayer. It also sits well in a hospital visit or a homegoing service, anywhere people need something slow and familiar.