Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus 

Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus From her childhood, the call to missionary service was the guiding motivation for Louisa M. R. Stead (c. 1850-1917). Born in Dover, England, and converted at the age of nine, Stead came to the United States in 1871, living in Cincinnati. She attended a camp meeting in Urbana, Ohio, where she dedicated her life to missionary service. Ill health prevented her from serving initially. She married in 1875, and the couple had a daughter, Lily. Hymnologist Kenneth Osbeck describes a major turning point in the family’s life: “When the child was four years of age, the family decided one day to enjoy the sunny beach at Long Island Sound, New York. While eating their picnic lunch, they suddenly heard cries of help and spotted a drowning boy in the sea. Mr. Stead charged into the water. As often happens, however, the struggling boy pulled his rescuer under water with him, and both drowned before the terrified eyes of wife and daughter. Out of her ‘why?’ struggle with God during the ensuing days glowed these meaningful words from the soul of Louisa Stead.” The hymn, “’Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus” was inspired by this personal tragedy. Soon after, Lousia and Lily left for the Cape Colony, South Africa, where Louisa worked as a missionary for fifteen years. She married Robert Wodehouse, a native of South Africa. Because of her health, the family found it necessary to return to the United States in 1895. Wodehouse pastored a Methodist congregation during these years until, in 1900, they returned to the mission field, this time to the Methodist mission station at Umtali, Southern Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe).Kenneth Osbeck records a message sent back to the United States shortly after her arrival in Southern Rhodesia: “In connection with the whole mission there are glorious possibilities, but one cannot, in the face of the peculiar difficulties, help but say, ‘Who is sufficient for these things?’ But with simple confidence and trust we may and do say, ‘Our sufficiency is of God.’” Her daughter Lily married after their return to Africa. Louisa retired because of ill health in 1911. Lily continued to serve for many years in South Rhodesia. Her mother passed away after a long illness in 1917 at her home in Penkridge near the Mutambara Mission, fifty miles from Umtali. Following her death, it was recorded that Christians in South Rhodesia continued to sing her hymn in the local Shona language.While the exact date of the composition is not known, sometime between 1880-1882, Lousia Stead’s hymn was first published in Songs of Triumph (1882). The Rev. Carlton R., Young, editor of The United Methodist Hymnal, describes the hymn’s content as “a series of loosely connected key evangelical words and phrases.” Indeed, the hymn is full of the language of piety common to the day in evangelical circles. Furthermore, the succession of stanzas lacks the usual progression of ideas leading to heaven that characterizes most gospel hymns. Perhaps the hymn might be best described as a mantra on the name of Jesus. Indeed, “Jesus” is sung twenty-five times if one sings all four stanzas and the refrain. Stanza one is a simple statement of “trust in Jesus.” The singer is invited to “rest upon his promise.” Though the “promise” is not specifically articulated, it is assumed that all know that this is the promise of salvation. The stanza ends with “Thus saith the Lord” – a phrase, interestingly enough, that appears 413 times in the Old Testament in the King James Version, and is a reference to God rather than Jesus.