Philip Paul Bliss

Philip Paul Bliss was born in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, on July 9, 1838. He grew up in a Methodist household, professed Christian faith as a boy, and was associated in youth with the Baptist church at Cherry Flats. His formal schooling was limited, but he pursued music seriously, attended sessions of the Normal Academy of Music at Geneseo, New York, and became an itinerant music teacher and convention leader. In the 1860s he entered professional music work connected with George F. Root's circle in Chicago.

By about 1870 Bliss was serving in music and Sunday school leadership at First Congregational Church in Chicago. He later devoted himself increasingly to evangelistic work with Daniel W. Whittle and became closely connected with the gospel-song movement surrounding Dwight L. Moody and Ira D. Sankey. Bliss wrote both the text and tune of “Hallelujah! What a Savior,” first published in 1875. His other enduring work includes “Hold the Fort,” “Wonderful Words of Life,” and the tune commonly sung with Horatio G. Spafford's “It Is Well with My Soul.”

Bliss and his wife, Lucy, died on December 29, 1876, in the Ashtabula, Ohio, railroad disaster while traveling toward Chicago. His career was unusually brief, but his combination of evangelistic singing, text writing, composition, and songbook publishing helped shape nineteenth-century American gospel hymnody.