God’s strange “Life Recipe” for Fanny Crosby

Fanny Jane Crosby 1820-1915

 

What possible good could come from a 6 week old baby girl being blinded for the rest of her life, because a misinformed doctor gave terrible advice? This question is once again answered by Romans 8:28: “And we know that (or we know how) God causes all things to work together for good (into good) to those who love God”.

The life of Fanny Crosby is another divine illustration of how our sovereign God takes all of the circumstances and experiences (the ingredients) a person goes through in life and stirs them together in His mixing bowl of providence, using His perfect and unique recipe, to create a human being who glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ.

Once again, to understand and appreciate all the work God went to, in developing His culinary delight named “Fanny Crosby”, once must know some of her history. If you try to just say a blind lady wrote more Christian hymns that anyone else in history, you just don’t feel the impact of what God did in her and through her.

….Fanny Crosby was well born, when she came into this world on March 24, 1820. She can trace the two lines of her ancestry back to the earliest New England stock.
….Her mother, who was also a Crosby, was descended from Simon Crosby who came to Boston in 1635 and was one of the founders of Harvard College, from which his son, Thomas, was graduated in 1653.
….Fanny's great grandfather, Isaac Crosby, was the father of nineteen children. One of them was born while he was serving in the Revolutionary Army.
….Fanny endured her first hardship as a six-week-old infant when she developed an eye infection. With their regular physician unavailable, a visiting doctor provided care and insisted her parents place hot mustard poultices on her eyes.
….A few weeks after that procedure, Fanny was declared totally blind.
….When this malpractice became known, the public indignation flamed so hot, that the ill-educated doctor hurriedly left town for parts unknown and was never heard from again.
….That same year, Fanny’s father died, leaving her in the care of her twenty one-year-old mother, Mercy Crosby, and her maternal grandmother, Eunice Paddock Crosby. The struggling family moved to New York within a few years.
….Her mother (Mrs. Crosby) could not endure the thought of her daughter's blindness, if a cure could be effected. So a journey was planned to New York City to consult the great specialist, Dr. Valentine Mott.
….The renowned physician, after his examination told Fanny, "My child, (he said in tones memorable for their kindness) you can never be made to see!" Her loving mother was grief-stricken.

….Determined her granddaughter would flourish despite blindness, Eunice read classics like Shakespeare and Don Quixote to Fanny, taught her about nature, and embedded scripture in her young heart through memorization. Fanny once said, “It was Grandma who brought the Bible to me and me to the Bible”.
….By the time she was eight, she could not look forward, but with anticipation and courage. So that same year, she wrote her first poem.

Oh! what a happy soul 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!
To weep and sigh because I'm blind
I cannot nor I won't.

….By the time Fanny was 12, she could quote word for word the biblical books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. As time went on, she added the book of Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, and multiple Psalms to memory.
….Days before her 15th birthday, Fanny joined the New York Institution of the Blind. She flourished in its halls and classrooms where she learned to sing and play the organ, harp, guitar, and piano.
….Fanny transitioned from pupil to teacher in 1847 and shared her skills in grammar, speech, and American history for the next eleven years.
….At this school she had the opportunity to meet distinguished people from foreign lands and American notables, who paid visits to the Institute and were introduced to the students.
….William Cullen Bryant read his poems there and Horace Greeley was a frequent visitor. President Polk made a pleasant impression there, and Gen. Winfield Scott caused a great flurry of excitement.

….Miss Crosby particularly liked Henry Clay and said his voice was so sonorous and persuasive.
….For a time, the superintendent had a young assistant whom teachers and pupils learned to admire for his ability and strong sincerity. His name was Grover Cleveland and they followed his brilliant career from step to step. None of them was surprised that he should become the President of the United States.
….William Bradbury, the publisher and hymn writer, met Fanny there on February 2, 1854 and she said that he changed her life. Fanny told him, “Van, I feel a hundred hymns in my head! The Lord has given me a purpose in my life.”
….Incredibly, Fanny sometimes composed six or seven hymns each day, memorizing up to a dozen before ever dictating them to her secretary.
….Fanny Crosby passionately invested in supporting and ministering to the needy as an urban mission worker. Earning only one or two dollars per hymn, she gave most of her income to the “rescue” or “gospel” missions in which she served— she even moved into the poorest slums of New York City, where she could invest daily in the lives of the hurting about whom she wrote. As she did this work, the words to this hymn came to her.

 

“Rescue the perishing, care for the dying,

Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave;

Weep o’er the erring one, lift up the fallen,

Tell them of Jesus the mighty to save.”

 

….“Aunt Fanny” (as they called her) engaged in her most ardent urban mission work from age 60-90. Upon her death, Fanny even willed funds toward developing a mission named in her honor, the Fanny Crosby Memorial Home for the Aged. The group operated from 1925-1966, and later continued her legacy as the Bridgeport Rescue Mission.
….She also served as a Baptist deaconess and missionary. However, She visited and ministered in many churches across the denominational divide and had close friends across the Christian world. ….Fanny Crosby never considered blindness a hindrance. Instead, she attributed her keen memory to a lack of sight. In her first poem at the age of eight, she wrote about the malady, “How many blessings I enjoy that other people don’t. To weep and sigh because I’m blind, I cannot and I won’t.”

….Fanny became known as the “Queen of Gospel Song Writers” and as the "Mother of modern congregational singing in America", with more than 100 million copies printed. She wrote eight to nine thousand hymns, but the exact count was obscured by the numerous pen names (as many as 200, according to some sources) that she employed to preserve her modesty. Also the publishers became embarrassed to publish a single hymnal with every song in it written by Fanny Crosby. (Pen names included Miss Grace Elliot, Grace J. Frances, Victoria Frances, Jennie Garnett, Robert Bruce, and hundreds more.

….Although Fanny wrote and published multiple books of poetry, two biographies, cantatas, patriotic and political songs, she prayed her hymns would change lives. A few of her best known of her hymns included “Safe in the Arms of Jesus”, “Rescue the Perishing”, “Blessed Assurance” ,“The Bright Forever”, “Savior, More Than Life to Me”, and “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior”.

….In 1897 she published a final volume of poetry, Bells at Evening, and Other Verses, and she later wrote two volumes of autobiography, Fanny Crosby’s Life-Story (1903) and Memories of Eighty Years (1906). Fanny Crosby died of a stroke following a prolonged illness. She was 94 years old.

….Planning to witness to one million men and women through her music, Fanny recorded the names of those who shared with her how they had confessed faith in Jesus.

….In 1843, Fanny spoke to the United States Senate , advocating for students with special needs. Two years later, she also testified before a joint session of Congress.
Fanny Crosby’s Conversion Story You Should Know about (see sources below)

In 1849, a cholera outbreak flooded both the city and the New York Institution of the Blind. Many of Fanny’s friends died. While already religious and brimming with Biblical knowledge, Fanny did not yet know Christ as her personal Lord & Savior. One night, Fanny dreamed of a dear friend who appeared close to death and ask Fanny "Will you meet me in heaven?" It did not matter to find, on waking, that the friend was in sound health. The question had set her to thinking deeply. When she awakened, Fanny felt unsettled and began attending numerous church services.

BUT…the faithfulness of both Fanny’s mother and grandmother was rewarded when, at thirty-one years old, Fanny Crosby asked Jesus to come into her life as Lord and she trusted Him as her Savior. Fanny received assurance of salvation from that moment and was propelled into her hymn writing career.

Shortly after that, she and her companions were singing, "Alas! and did my Savior bleed" and as they came to the line, "Here, Lord, I give myself away", she definitely surrendered herself to God in faith and a flood of light and joy ensued. She joined the Old John Street Methodist church. This experience became determinative of her inner life, of her lifework, and of the sentiment of her hymns.

That year she married Alexander Van Alstyne, who was also blind and was also a former pupil and then a teacher at the school, and she published her third volume, A Wreath of Columbia’s Flowers. The couple’s only child was born in 1859 and died in infancy.

Tammy Kennington is a writer and speaker familiar with the impact of trauma, chronic illness, and parenting in the hard places. Her heart is to lead women from hardship to hope. You can meet with Tammy at her blog https://www.tammykennington.com where she’ll send you her e-book, Moving from Pain to Peace-A Journey Toward Hope When the Past Holds You Captive.

The summation below is from the Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica and was most recently revised and updated by Melissa Petruzzello.

The theology of all Fanny’s hymns is uniformly evangelical. She knew humanity to be sinful and in need of salvation and she magnified the love of God, the grace of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. The beauty of faith and of peace is painted in alluring tints and the glories of heaven described in glowing imagery drawn from Revelation.

The central truth of her message in song is, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life". Thus her songs form an appropriate atmosphere for evangelistic preaching. They produced conviction of sin and conversion. Of their far-reaching influence, only eternity can give the details.

Fanny Crosby ha "tasted and seen that the Lord is good" and desired others to enjoy the same bountiful feast. During the last years of her life, Frances Ridley Havergal (the famous hymn writer from England) kept up a correspondence with Fanny Crosby, though they never met. In these lines of Miss Havergal is admiration of Miss Crosby for her spiritual insight, her resignation and her consecration:

Sweet blind singer over the sea,
Tuneful and jubilant, how can it be
That the songs of gladness, which float so far
As if they fell from an evening star,
Are the notes of one who may never see
"Visible music" of flower and tree...

How can she sing in the dark like this?
What is her fountain of light and bliss?...

Her heart can see, her heart can see!
Well may she sing so joyously!
For the King himself, in His tender grace,
Hath shown her the brightness of His face...

Dear blind sister over the sea!
An English heart goes forth to thee.
We are linked by a cable of faith and song,
Flashing bright sympathy swift along;
One in the east and one in the west,
Singing for Him whom our souls love best!...

Sister! what will our meeting be,
When our hearts shall sing and our eyes shall see?

[From Heroines of Modern Religion edited by Warren Dunham Foster. New York: Sturgis & Walton Co., 1913]

The historical records above certainly answer the question, “What possible good could come from a 6 week old baby girl being blinded for the rest of her life, because a misinformed doctor gave terrible advice?” Once again, we see Romans 8:28 fulfilled so beautifully: “And we know that (or we know how) God causes all things to work together for good (into good) to those who love God”.

Now it must be said that God is no respecter of persons. He will not work all things together into good for one person and then not do it for another person. He does it for each of His children, who are called according to His purpose. Therefore, since He did, beyond a shadow of a doubt, take and work together everything that ever happened to Fanny Crosby and make it all into a beautiful, creative, and productive life…He will beyond a shadow of a doubt, do the same for you and I. Your story and my story will not look like Fanny’s, but it will be just as powerful.

If you have any more time today or on another day, you will be blessed by reviewing a few of Fanny’s most important quotes below.

Yours in Christ,
Gene

 

_________________________________
10 Important Quotes by Fanny Crosby

 

“Live in the moment and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.”

 

“It may seem a little old-fashioned, always to begin one’s work with prayer, but I never undertake a hymn without first asking the good Lord to be my inspiration.”

 

“Two of my secrets for staying happy and healthy are to control my tongue and to control my thoughts.”

 

“One of the easiest resolves that I formed in my young and joyous heart was to leave all care to yesterday and to believe that the morning would bring forth its own peculiar joy.”

 

“I have not for a moment in more than eighty-five years felt a spark of resentment against him (the doctor), because I have always believed...that the good Lord...by this means consecrated me to the work that I am still permitted to do.”

 

“God will answer your prayers better than you think. Of course, one will not always get exactly what he has asked for...We all have sorrows and disappointments, but one must never forget that, if commended to God, they will issue in good...His own solution is far better than any we could conceive.”

 

“The Lord is the sunshine of my soul. To God be the glory!”

 

“It seemed intended by the blessed Providence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank Him for the dispensation.”

 

“I could not have written thousands of hymns if I had been hindered by the distractions of seeing all of the beautiful objects that would have been presented to my notice.”

 

“If I had a choice, I would still choose to remain blind...for when I die, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my blessed Savior.”

 

"Oh, what a happy soul I am, / although I cannot see! / I am resolved that in this world / Contented I will be.”