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| Fanny Crosby |
Times
of seeking God often precede a moment of revelation that transforms our lives. Blind
poetess and prolific hymn writer, Fanny Crosby, had such an experience. Fanny
had become the star of the first Institute for the Blind in New York City where
she was educated and later taught. She recited her poetry before presidents and
had her work published in newspapers and books.
One biographer wrote, “As Johann Strauss reigned in Vienna as the Waltz
King and John Phillip Sousa in Washington as the March King, so Fanny Crosby
reigned in New York in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century as the
Hymn Queen.”
Methodist class meetings, with their
lively singing and warm atmosphere were attracting many New Yorkers who longed
for more than religious formality. In 1850 Mr. Camp, Fanny’s friend and a science
teacher at the Institute, invited her to attend special revival meetings at the
Methodist Broadway Tabernacle on Thirtieth
Street
After the dream, Fanny attended meetings
with Camp every evening for several weeks. Services consisted of long emotional
sermons, punctuated with loud amens and hallelujahs, tears of repentance and
joyful outbursts, unlike anything Fanny had experienced in rural Connecticut
A feeling that a deeper life in God
awaited her kept Fanny returning to the Methodist meetings. A few times she
knelt with other God-seekers at the dirt-floor altar and prayed for hours but
came away joyless and empty. Until November 20, 1850. “On that night it seemed
to me light must come then or never.” At the invitation for prayer, Fanny
walked to the altar and again knelt and prayed fervently for a spiritual
breakthrough. When she was about to give up, the congregation sang Isaac Watts’
hymn “Alas and Did My Savior Bleed.” When Fanny heard the words of the final
verse, “Dear Lord I give myself away, ‘tis all that I can do,” she jumped to
her feet and shouted Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Of that night she said, “My very
soul was flooded with celestial light. For the first time I realized I had been
holding the world in one hand and the Lord in the other.”
Bernard Ruffin writes in his
biography of Fanny – “although there were no dramatic changes in her life and
she soon realized it did not solve all her spiritual problems, her November
experience as she called it, marked the beginning of a deeper Christian life and
a total dedication of her life to God.”
Fanny’s hymn portfolio increased to 9,000.
Many, like At the Cross Where I First Saw
the Light allude to her November 1850 experience. Her reputation as a happy, contented Christian
lasted until she died at age 95. She didn’t seek pity for her blindness but
often said, "When I get
to heaven the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior!" Generations have grown up on Fanny’s hymns and congregations still
sing Near the Cross, Tell Me the Story of Jesus, Praise Him Praise Him, I am
Thine O Lord, Close to Thee and hundreds of others. Her gravestone in
Bridgeport, Connecticut is inscribed with two lines from one of her best known
hymns –
“Blessed
Assurance, Jesus is Mine
Oh
what a foretaste of glory Divine.”
Experiences like Fanny’s ignite a
passion for Christ in our hearts that forever changes us.
****
Rose McCormick Brandon is the author of Promises of Home - Stories of Canada's British Home Children, One Good Word Makes all the Difference and numerous magazine articles. She writes two blogs, Promises of Home and Listening to my Hair Grow. Contact her at: rosembrandon@yahoo.ca
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