Words: , 1874:

Dr. Palmer re­quest­ed me to pre­pare sev­er­al songs on the sub­ject of the cur­rent Sun­day-school les­sons. One of the themes was “Christ Still­ing the Tem­pest.” It so ex­pressed an ex­per­i­ence I had recent­ly passed through, that this hymn was the re­sult. A very dear and only bro­ther, a young man of rare love­li­ness and prom­ise of char­ac­ter, had been laid in the grave, a vic­tim of the same di­sease that had al­ready tak­en fa­ther and mo­ther. His death oc­curred un­der pe­cul­iarly dis­tress­ing cir­cum­stances. He was more than a thou­sand miles away from home, seek­ing in the balmy air of the sun­ny South the heal­ing that our cold­er cli­mate could not give. Sud­den­ly he grew worse. The writ­er was ill and could not go to him. For two weeks the long lines of tel­e­graph wires car­ried back and forth mes­sages be­tween the dy­ing brother and his wait­ing sisters, ere the word came which told us that our be­loved brother was no longer a dwell­er on the earth. Al­though we mourned not as those with­out hope, and al­though I had be­lieved on Christ in ear­ly child­hood and had al­ways de­sired to give the Master a con­se­crat­ed and obed­i­ent life, I became wick­ed­ly re­bell­i­ous at this dis­pen­sa­tion of di­vine prov­i­dence. I said in my heart that God did not care for me or mine. But the Master’s own voice stilled the tem­pest in my un­sanc­ti­fied heart, and brought it to the calm of a deep­er faith and a more per­fect trust.

When American president James Gar­field was as­sas­sin­at­ed in 1881, the hymn was sung at sev­er­al of the fun­er­al serv­ic­es held in his hon­or throug­hout the count­ry.

Music: , 1874.