Fanny Crosby

Life

Crosby was born in 1820 in a rural village in New York State. She herself said that she lost her sight at about six weeks of age as a result of improper treatment for an eye infection. Physicians today, however, consider it more likely that she was born blind and that her parents simply did not notice. Her father died that autumn, and she was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother, who had the young Crosby memorize long passages of the Bible.

From 1835 to 1843 she studied at the New York Institution for the Blind, and from 1847 to 1858 she taught at the same school. During her years there she recited poetry before the United States Congress on the school's behalf, and in 1844 she published her first collection of poems, The Blind Girl and Other Poems. She is said to have experienced conversion at a Methodist revival meeting in New York in the autumn of 1850, an experience that remained the foundation of her faith for the rest of her life. In 1858 she married Alexander Van Alstyne, a blind musician and fellow alumnus of the school. She was a longtime member of John Street Methodist Church in New York. She died in 1915 at the age of 94; her gravestone bears the name "Aunt Fanny" together with the opening line of one of her best-known works.

Ministry and Achievements

Crosby began writing hymn texts in earnest in the 1860s. Working with composers such as William Bradbury, William Howard Doane, and Phoebe Knapp, she produced a large number of Sunday school songs and gospel songs (popular hymns designed to be easily sung at evangelistic meetings). She is reported to have written more than 8,000 hymn texts over her lifetime, more than 4,000 of which were published by Biglow & Main. To avoid having too many works appear under a single name, she published her texts under numerous pseudonyms and initials.

Her best-known works include "Safe in the Arms of Jesus," "Blessed Assurance," "Rescue the Perishing," and "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour." Her hymns also spread widely in Britain through collections such as those compiled by Ira Sankey. Crosby also devoted herself to rescue mission work in the slums of New York, and in her later years she was so highly respected that she was called "the Methodist saint."

Influence on the Korean Church

From the early missionary period, the Korean church sang translated American gospel songs, and Crosby's works make up a significant share of them. According to one account, the current New Hymnal contains 22 of her hymn texts. No. 288, "Blessed Assurance"; No. 417, "Safe in the Arms of Jesus"; No. 498, "Rescue the Perishing"; and No. 279, "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour," along with "All the Way My Saviour Leads Me" and "I Am Thine, O Lord," are widely sung across denominational lines. No. 288 in particular, a hymn of testimony and assurance of salvation, is frequently sung at revival meetings and evangelistic gatherings. Her life of gratitude in spite of blindness is also often cited as a sermon illustration.

Assessment

Crosby is regarded as a representative figure of late nineteenth-century American evangelicalism. Her hymns, which express personal experiences of salvation in simple language, have been included in hymnals in many countries, including Korean hymnals. She has also drawn criticism. A Dictionary of Hymnology, edited by the English hymnologist John Julian, judged that, with a few exceptions, her hymns are weak as literature, that their merits lie in their simplicity and earnestness, and that much of their popularity is owed to their tunes. Others have criticized them as excessively sentimental. These assessments are connected to broader debates about the gospel song as a genre that emphasizes personal experience.