She had just been released from a kind of prison-like
experience, and being mobile again, overflowing joy surged through her. That’s
the quickest, one-sentence description of what sensation Eliza Edmunds Hewitt
felt in 1887 as she scribbled the words for “There Is Sunshine in My Soul”. She
could have moaned about how long she’d been trapped, about the lost time and
tedium of the past several months, or how she intended to repay the one responsible
for these circumstances. But at that moment, rediscovering and appreciating the
blessing of her physical freedom and His care for her blotted out those other moods.
Eliza was a 35-year old who had been disabled by an
accident, recovered for a time, and then discovered that this period was a
precursor for her life’s work. Hewitt had begun what she thought was her life’s
calling as a teacher in Philadelphia, after attending schools there herself as
a youngster. She was at the corner of 23rd and Brown Streets one day,
in a classroom at the Northern Home for Friendless Children (see a sketch of it
here), when her life took an unexpected turn. Teaching in a school for orphans
must have had its challenges – was it more or less difficult than other schools
is a debatable question – but Eliza could not have welcomed the assault from a
student who cracked her across the back with a piece of slate one day. The incident
left her in a large cast for several months, a trial that surely had at least
part of her wondering ‘why me?’ You can infer from the words she penned the day
of her release from this cast what she was doing. Taking a walk through a sunny
park on a spring day radiates from the words she composed, a blessing that she
just couldn’t ignore upon her return to her home from this stroll. She could
walk again! Did she hug the doctor? If she did, she thanked Jesus still more,
for perhaps the experience had focused her conscience upon Him more than ever. The
song-writing she’d begun after her bed-ridden experience had evidently made a
lasting impression upon her, so that when her spinal condition turned out to be
chronic, she turned to an alternative life’s work. Sunday schools and
song-writing were her passion from that point forward, producing an abundance
of hymns – over 1,700!—until her death in 1920.
What pushes someone like Eliza Hewitt to such prolific
heights? Had she read about Joseph, the great son of a Genesis patriarch, who
might have bemoaned his imprisonment in Egypt? He avoided revenge’s temptation. No jail kept
him from using what was inside of himself, not even death’s threat. He was the hint
of Him, so to speak, who would later arrive on the scene of history and overcome
life’s reverses. Eliza must have remembered Him too, don’t you think?
See more information on the song discussed above in 101 More
Hymn Stories by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1985; and Then
Sings My Soul – 150 of the World’s Greatest Hymn Stories, Robert J. Morgan,
Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003.
See here for list of composer’s works: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/h/e/w/hewitt_ees.htm
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