Praise Him! Praise Him!

Fanny Crosby is recognised as one of the most popular hymn writers of all time. Who is not familiar with Blessed Assurance, Safe in the Arms of Jesus, Rescue the Perishing, Saved By Grace and others of her compositions? It is said she wrote over 9,000 hymns, More than eight thousand of them appearing in print. I find that Charles Wesley, the great British hymn writer, is reported to have published 4,100 hymns and to have left 2,000 in manuscript. E.K. Emurian is authority for the statement that Fanny Crosby has written more hymns, songs and poems than anyone else since the beginning of the Christian era!

Yet Fanny Crosby (Mrs Alexander Van Alstyne) did not begin writing hymns until the age of forty-four. Even more remarkable is the fact that she was totally blind, having lost her sight through a tragic doctors error at the age of six weeks. And her father died before she was one year old. In spite of blindness, she often referred in her hymns to the sight which she was denied but which she anticipated when she would be released from mortal ties. How many of us when singing Blessed Assurance recall that it was one blind who exclaimed, Visions of rapture now burst on my sight? And looking forward by faith she could say, Oh, the soul-thrilling rapture when I view His blessed face, and luster of His kindly beaming eye; ... Or, I know I shall see in His beauty the King in whose law I delight;... And we cannot leave out, And I shall see Him face to face, And tell the story Saved by grace.