Fanny Crosby is one of the best-known women hymn writers of the nineteenth century. She is interesting for two reasons, the first of which is her unusual life. Fanny was blind, and meeting this challenge shaped her life, her faith and her life’s work. The second reason is that her particular form of songwriting is part of a long tradition of revival music in America. Knowledge of Fanny’s songs and their context helps us learn some very useful things about the history of revival songs, and where that tradition has led us today.

Her Early Blindness⤒🔗

Fanny Crosby was born in 1820 in the countryside of New York State. When she was only 6 weeks old her mother noticed that her eyes were sore and red-rimmed, and that she cried a good deal and tried to rub them with her little fists. She consulted an apothecary (precursors to our modern chemists). He gave her poultices, which was a tragic mistake – their effect was to remove her sight permanently. A second sadness was that Mr Crosby died when his baby daughter was only one year old, so Fanny’s mother had the responsibility of caring for her blind child alone. But it seems that Fanny was a happy and content little girl even so: she would sit with her mother in the countryside, and ask her to describe the things she could not see. Mrs Crosby would draw word-pictures for her, and in this way Fanny developed a love of nature and a way of describing things in words.

When she was 5 her mother took her to New York City to see a doctor who told her Fanny would never be able to see. But as she grew older, she began to write poetry about the Lord Jesus, and the way we must see Him with eyes of faith. She had a believing grandmother, who described the birds and the stars, and also read her the Bible. She stored in her mind long portions of Scripture – even as a child she was able to repeat most of the New Testament, the Pentateuch, Ruth, many of the Psalms and parts of the Prophets.

But she yearned to go to school and learn like other children. Then someone told her mother about a school for the blind which had been established in New York. Poor Mrs Crosby struggled with the idea of letting her 15-year-old daughter go and live away from home. But Fanny was adamant; she so wanted an education. She went, and thrived on the literature, history, philosophy and science she learned at the school. She was also able, while there, to learn the piano and organ; and the works of Longfellow and the English poets inspired her own gift of writing poetry. The headmaster of the school, however, wanted her to give up her poetry, regarding it as a frivolous thing to spend time on. Ironically, at this point a visiting phrenologist examined Fanny (phrenology was a practice popular in those days, “reading” people’s abilities by the bumps and lumps on their heads. It even had the respectability of a science). He pronounced Fanny a born poetess; and as a consequence, she no longer had to plead to be allowed to write her verses.

Her Conversion←⤒🔗

Fanny continued on at the School for the Blind, teaching when she had finished her studies. She was actually well into her adult years when she was converted. Apparently one night she had a dream in which Theodore Camp, a young teacher at the school, was dying; and he asked Fanny, “Will you meet me in heaven?” She dreamed she replied, “Yes, I will, and God helping me, I will.” When she woke she realized she wasn’t ready for heaven, and during the next few years she tried hard to find God and forgiveness for her sins, as well as to do good works. She became a regular attender of a Methodist Episcopal church, one of the more actively evangelistic churches in the United States on the frontier in the earlier days, and by Fanny’s time, in the big East Coast cities among poor immigrants as well. But it was not until she was 30 that she finally took the step she regarded as her decision for Christ. Her church was holding what was commonly called a revival meeting, or mission, and she stepped forward when the invitation (altar call) was given, shouting, “Hallelujah!”

Despite her blindness, Fanny was a very active Christian. She was involved in a lot of charitable work carried out by her church among the desperately poor of New York’s worst area, known in those days as the “Bowery.” These were the days of massive immigration into the United States from southern and eastern Europe. Italians, Irish, German, Poles, and millions of Russian Jews (many of them fleeing for their lives from the pogroms the Russians periodically raised against them) were entering through Ellis Island. These people were destitute when they arrived in the cities of America’s east coast, and crowded slum housing was all they could afford until work in factories or removal further west enabled them to improve their situation. Churches like Fanny’s worked hard at providing food, shelter and other necessities of life. They were also very active in caring for the sick during a terrible cholera epidemic (Fanny was a nurse at this time). They also took the Gospel to them in a very simple, emotionally-charged way. Many of her songs were written for singing at the mid-week “revival” meetings where evangelistic speakers would urge the unconverted to decide for Christ.

Her Marriage←⤒🔗

At the School for the Blind she met and fell in love with a fellow blind student, Alexander van Alstyne, and they married. He was an accomplished musician, and taught music at the school in later years. In fact, they collaborated in producing a number of hymns. They had a long marriage – Alexander died in 1902, when Fanny was 82.

Throughout her life Fanny continued song-writing. She became so well-known that her songs were used in every large gathering for evangelistic work. (Dwight L. Moody, the most famous travelling 19^th century evangelist, included 76 of them in Redemption Songs, his book for revival meetings that he compiled together with Ira Sankey, the musician who always accompanied him.) From her pen poured a multitude of verses. During her long life of 95 years, Fanny wrote over 8000 songs. One music publisher commissioned her to write 3 songs a week, all through the year; and for two firms alone she wrote over 5000 of them. It is said that she used 216 different pen-names for her writing – perhaps some of her publishers preferred their customers not to know they had one writer producing such a vast volume of material, lest that cast doubt on its quality.

Her Type of Hymn←⤒🔗

She also “wrote to order” for various requests. Often the themes of her songs were suggested by visiting evangelists wanting a new song on a particular subject. Sometimes musician friends would compose some music, then ask Fanny for the words. This is how “Blessed Assurance” happened. A Mrs Knapp apparently asked Fanny, “What does this tune say?” and she replied, “Why, that says ‘Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.’” The themes of heaven and the Lord’s return were her favourites, and the anticipation of seeing her Saviour had great personal meaning for this blind lady. A well-intentioned Scottish minister once remarked to her, “I think it is a great pity that the Master, when He showered so many gifts on you, did not give you sight.” Her rebuke came quickly:

'Do you know that if at birth I had been able to make one petition to my Creator, it would have been that I should be born blind?' 'Why?' asked the surprised clergyman. 'Because, when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Saviour.'

So where does Fanny’s type of song fit into the tradition of American religious music? To understand this properly, it is necessary to look back to the early days of church life, particularly on the frontiers of the southern states. It was there that, through the work of itinerant preachers, mainly Methodist and Baptist, isolated farming families were taken the gospel, and tiny, far-flung churches were established. The isolation of these people, their simple tastes and their zeal for gospel-preaching of a rather spectacular (or sensational) kind, made what were called “camp meetings” or “tent meetings”, which were held during the summer months, very popular. These were large gatherings of simple country people for the purposes of an intense period of fiery preaching under canvas. And sometimes people were converted by some rather emotional means. The singing of rousing songs designed to prick the conscience and stimulate the hearer to “decide for Christ” was one of these means. Sometimes these songs were sung over and over as the meetings progressed day by day.

Early in the nineteenth century one of America’s most famous evangelists, Charles Grandison Finney, thought long and hard about how to stimulate conversion in the audiences to which he preached. Finney, a New England Presbyterian minister, Arminian in theology, was driven by an urgent desire to make converts; and as a consequence he introduced a number of innovations that were to have a long history in American evangelism. Among these were praying for people by name, having women praying publicly in meetings, preaching everywhere – even in small towns without an invitation from the local pastor, praying to God in a very familiar way, very long meetings, the use of an “anxious seat” for troubled souls, inquiry meetings, and the immediate admission of converts into the churches. He did later become more restrained after beginning a long period of settled ministry in New York City in the 1830s, but his practices were quickly picked up by other churches; and Fanny’s Methodist Episcopal church was one, as we can see from the story of her own conversion. And these practices have endured to the present day – nowhere more emphatically than in charismatic circles.

Her Background←⤒🔗

The songs that accompanied these revivalistic practices (practices specifically aimed to “produce” conversions) have often been called “gospel songs”. Fanny’s songs mostly fall into this category, and they have certainly been used very much for this purpose in the century and a half since they were written. Various writers on worship and worship practices have written about the history of these songs – and generally, it can be said that they aim to urge the singer to do something. Often they encourage the sinner to “decide for Christ” – to give his heart and his soul to the Lord in repentance. Sometimes their aim is to persuade the singer to witness for Christ. Fanny’s most famous song, “Rescue the perishing,” is one of these, written after she had spoken at a meeting where she was particularly urgent that someone there needed the Saviour. Such songs, usually with repetitive choruses sung at the end of each verse, are definitely aimed at reinforcing the message in the singer and hearer alike.

But, as has been said often, such songs are not hymns. They do not turn the singer’s mind toward God, and praise of Him. As one writer has said, “A hymn coordinates with prayer.” Hymns lead our thoughts God-wards. Revival songs aim to motivate unbelievers and believers into action. For this reason, it is hymns that are appropriate to worship of God. Erik Routley, a prominent English historian of hymnody, has shown clearly that Fanny’s songs are in the tradition of revival songs. They were designed for a special purpose – evangelistic meetings in the United States and Britain. They were very much “songs for ordinary people.” They were not designed for formal public worship. He adds that one hymnal (the English Hymnal) has them in a section entitled “for Mission Services” – discreetly subtitled “Not suitable for general use”. They were, as Routley rightly points out, designed for rallies of the Salvation Army and the like – men’s and women’s meetings, and weeknight evangelistic meetings of the churches.

They are not, in fact, by common consent, vehicles for the public worship of the Church as a whole...

And even as instruments for the salvation of souls, Routley believes (and the historical facts bear him out), Charles Wesley’s hymns (better in theology and God-ward focus) have a longer-lasting and more significant history.

Her Place Today←⤒🔗

Fanny’s songs belong very much to their age and revivalistic setting. They were popular for a long time in the context for which they were written – evangelistic rallies and decision-focused church outreaches. However, as churches changed, most especially with the rise of the charismatic movement, Fanny’s type of song was superseded by the much more emotionally daring – but shorter, and more repetitive – choruses. I have even heard it suggested that the refrains attached to songs of her era simply became the choruses of today. Certainly, they were the “repetition” element in gospel songs. These days, the highly-charged emotional atmosphere of charismatic services is generally produced by bands of skilled musicians, and the music is something the congregation responds to rather than participates in. Their words – often vague and sensual – are subservient to the effect of the music. Even Fanny’s songs contain too much verbal, objective content for the achieving of the sorts of subjective responses bands today aim for.

Fanny Crosby certainly had an interesting, and service-filled life, especially given the fact of her blindness. She served God whole­heartedly, and in this we can imitate her. But her songs were the product of an age and a theology far surpassed by the better, and more enduring models with which we have been blessed.