Preeminent Poet

Fanny J. Crosby

Fanny Crosby (1820-1915) is remembered as “the most prolific and significant writer of gospel songs in American history.” She is credited with more than 8,000, including such enduring favorites as “To God Be the Glory”, “Blessed Assurance”, “Praise Him! Praise Him!”, “Redeemed”, “All the Way My Savior Leads Me”, and many others.

Some time ago, it was reported that the Hope Publishing Co. still had “hundreds of Fanny Crosby’s poems in their files just waiting to be set to music.”

Crosby was born in Putnam County, N.Y. When she was six weeks old, a doctor’s bungling treatment of a minor eye inflammation left her blind. Yet she triumphed over this adversity. At the age of eight, she wrote her first poem:

“O, what a happy child I am
Although I cannot see
I am resolved that in this world
Contented I will be.
How many blessings I enjoy
That other people don’t!
So weep or sigh because I am blind
I cannot, and I won’t.”

Later she wrote, “It seems intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life.” Her mother and grandmother greatly influenced her in the things of God, and by the time she was 10 years old, Crosby could “recite the first four books of the Old Testament and the four Gospels!” She would also recite “poems almost without number.”

In 1835, Crosby was enrolled at the famous Institution for the Blind in New York City. There she excelled in all but math, so she wrote, “I loathe, abhor, it makes me sick to hear the word ‘arithmetic’!”

Soon she became resident poet for the school. In 1844 she published her first book of poems, which contained her first hymn. Other volumes followed. In 1851 she expressed concern about her “declining health, yet she lived for 64 more years.

Not until 1850 did she receive assurance of salvation, during revival meetings at the Broadway Tabernacle Methodist Church in New York City. In 1858 she married Alexander Van Alstyne, also a student and teacher at the school for the blind. He was a gifted musician and faithful partner until his death in 1902.

Crosby wrote the lyrics to many popular secular songs, some of which were used in minstrel shows. But the turning point in her life was February 2, 1864, when she met William Bradbury, the famous hymn writer and publisher, who told her, “For many years I have been wanting you to write for me. I wish you would begin right away!” She did, and that began an incredibly fruitful ministry of 51 years.

How she actually wrote is revealing. She said, “I never undertake a hymn without first asking the good Lord to be my inspiration in the work that I am about to do.” She found it helpful to hold a small book in her hand, something she often did when lecturing or giving concerts. She would pray and meditate until the mood was right, sometimes quoting several hymns to “prime the pump.” Then ideas would come and she would write the song in her mind and commit it to memory. Sometimes as many as 40 songs were stored away in her mind. Each song would ruminate for a few days, at which point Crosby would dictate it to a friend, who would send it to the publisher.

In her later years, Crosby became a popular public speaker, and was for a time perhaps the best known women in America. She often met with important public figures and even played her hymn “Safe in the Arms of Jesus” at the funeral of President Ulysses S. Grant in 1885. She also wrote an autobiography, Fanny Crosby’s Life Story, which is now long out of print.

Some may be surprised to learn that she used more than 100 pseudonyms over the course of her career (as hymnbook publishers were reluctant to include more than a few hymns by the same writer), including Julie Stirling, Frank Gould, Carrie M. Wilson, and Ella Dale. How she kept track of them all, and her thousands of poems, lacking both eyesight and computers is astounding.

Crosby earned an average of $2.00, and later $10.00, for each of her poems; of course a dollar went much farther then. Her ministry earned her eternal dividends, and the Church is richer today for her faithfulness.

At almost 95 years of age, she was called home. Often she had written about this hope, and perhaps best known of all is the chorus, “And I shall see Him face to face, and tell the story saved by grace.”

Bernard R. DeRemer chronicled the lives of dozens of heroes of the faith in more than a decade of writing for Pulpit Helps Magazine. He continues to serve in this capacity as a volunteer contributor to Disciple. He lives in West Liberty, Ohio.

Sources:
Victorious Christians You Should Know, by Warren W. Wiersbe; excerpts used by permission.
Wikipedia, “Fanny Crosby”.