Fanny Crosby’s “Blessed Assurance”
At age eight, having never seen a sunrise, a flower, or her own mother’s face, Fanny Crosby wrote her first poem:
“O what a happy soul am I! 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, and I won’t.”
This wasn’t denial. It wasn’t toxic positivity. It was a deliberate choice that would shape the next 87 years of her life and produce between 8,000 and 9,000 hymns—more than any other writer in history. By the time she died at 94, Fanny Crosby’s songs had been sung in more languages and by more people than she could have ever imagined.
But how does someone who lives in perpetual darkness write about seeing glory?
The Six-Week-Old Tragedy
Frances Jane Crosby was born on March 24, 1820, in Southeast, Putnam County, New York, to John and Mercy Crosby. She was a healthy baby until, at just six weeks old, she developed an eye infection with inflammation and discharge.
A local doctor was called. He applied hot mustard poultices directly to her inflamed eyes—a treatment that destroyed her optic nerves. By the time the damage was recognized, it was irreversible. Fanny would never see.
When she was only six months old, her father died, leaving Mercy to raise Fanny alone. But Mercy’s mother, Eunice Paddock Crosby, moved in to help. This grandmother would become one of the most influential people in Fanny’s life.
Modern physicians now believe Fanny may have been born blind and the inflammation simply revealed what her parents hadn’t yet noticed. But Fanny herself always attributed her blindness to the doctor’s malpractice. Remarkably, she never expressed bitterness about it.
Years later, she would write: “It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank him for the dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me.”
The Making of a Poet
Grandmother Eunice understood that Fanny would experience the world differently than other children, so she became Fanny’s eyes. She held the little girl on her lap and described everything in vivid detail—the colors of flowers, the patterns of birds’ wings, the way sunlight looked filtering through leaves, the changing hues of sunset.
They would sit together and listen to birdsongs until Fanny could identify each species by sound alone. They explored textures—rough bark, smooth stones, soft petals. Eunice filled Fanny’s mind with word-pictures of a world she couldn’t see but could imagine.
More importantly, Eunice began teaching Fanny to memorize Scripture. Unable to read Braille (which wouldn’t become widespread until decades later), Fanny learned the Bible by ear. By the time she was ten, she had memorized the first four books of the Old Testament, all four Gospels, most of Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, and many Psalms.
This vast reservoir of biblical language would later flow naturally into her hymn writing. Her songs weren’t forced or artificial—they were the overflow of a mind saturated with Scripture.
But Fanny wasn’t a somber, sheltered child. She climbed trees, rode horses bareback through the pasture, played tag with neighborhood children, and got into mischief. Once, she picked a forbidden white rose from her grandmother’s garden and lied about it. When caught, Eunice read her the story of Ananias and Sapphira—a lesson Fanny never forgot about the seriousness of dishonesty.
At age eight, frustrated that sighted people seemed to pity her, Fanny composed her first poem—that defiant declaration of contentment. “It has been the motto of my life,” she would say decades later.
The School Years
At fifteen, Fanny entered the New York Institution for the Blind in Manhattan. She would remain there for twenty-three years—first as a student (1835-1843), then as a teacher of English grammar, rhetoric, and history (1847-1858).
The school became her intellectual and creative home. She learned music, playing both guitar and piano. She discovered she had a clear soprano voice. She wrote poetry constantly—secular verses about nature, patriotism, friendship, and love.
In 1844, while still a student, she published her first book: The Blind Girl, and Other Poems. It sold modestly. Two more poetry collections followed in 1851 and 1858.
During this time, Fanny became something of a celebrity. She was invited to address Congress—becoming the first woman to speak publicly in the U.S. Senate Chamber. She met presidents and prominent figures. Her poems appeared in major newspapers.
But her most significant collaborations were with musicians. She began writing lyrics to be set to music, partnering with composer George Frederick Root on popular songs like “Hazel Dell” and “Rosalie, the Prairie Flower.” Together they created The Flower Queen, the first American secular cantata, which was performed across the country.
The Conversion
Despite her religious upbringing and biblical knowledge, Fanny didn’t experience what she called “true conversion” until she was thirty years old.
One night in 1850, she had a vivid dream. A close friend, apparently dying, asked her: “Will you meet me in heaven?”
When Fanny woke and discovered her friend was actually fine, it didn’t matter. The question had shaken her. She realized that all her Bible knowledge, all her poetry, all her good deeds—none of it meant she truly knew God personally.
Shortly after, she was singing with friends at a revival meeting. When they reached the line in Isaac Watts’s hymn, “Here, Lord, I give myself away,” something broke open inside her. She later described it as a flood of light and joy. She gave herself completely to Christ and joined the Old John Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Manhattan.
This experience became the turning point of her life. Every hymn she would write flowed from this moment of surrender.
Love and Loss
In 1858, Fanny married Alexander Van Alstyne, a blind musician and former teacher at the Institution for the Blind. They had one child together—a baby who died in infancy. This loss devastated Fanny, though she rarely spoke of it publicly.
Her marriage was unconventional. Alexander was often away, pursuing his own musical career. By 1880, they had quietly separated, though they never divorced. Fanny would live the rest of her life essentially alone, moving between modest apartments in Manhattan and Brooklyn, often on the edge of poverty.
Publishers paid her poorly for her hymns—sometimes as little as one or two dollars per text. Yet she never complained. “I have all I need,” she would say. “The Lord takes care of me.”
The Hymn Factory
In 1864, everything changed. Composer William B. Bradbury, who was creating Sunday school hymnals, asked Fanny to write hymn texts for him.
Her first hymn, “We Are Going,” was written on February 5, 1864, at the Panton Hotel on Franklin Street in New York. When Bradbury died in 1868, that hymn was sung at his funeral.
But it was her partnership with publisher Lucius Biglow and composer Ira Sankey that made Fanny a household name. Sankey was the singing partner of evangelist Dwight L. Moody, and their revival campaigns were sweeping America and England. Sankey attributed much of their success to Fanny’s hymns.
Fanny’s process was unusual. A composer would play a melody for her, and she would immediately “see” the words that fit. She didn’t write them down herself—she composed in her head and dictated them to someone else. Sometimes she would create three or four hymns in a single day.
She often worked late at night, lying in bed composing entire hymns mentally, then dictating them in the morning. Her prodigious memory allowed her to hold complex verses in her mind without notes.
Because publishers were hesitant to fill their hymnals with too many works by one author, Fanny wrote under at least 200 pseudonyms: Grace J. Frances, Mrs. C. M. Wilson, Lizzie Edwards, Ella Dale, Henrietta E. Blair, Rose Atherton, and many others. For years, congregations sang her hymns without knowing they were all by the same author.
“What Does This Tune Say?”
One day in 1873, Fanny visited her friend Phoebe Palmer Knapp, a wealthy woman who composed music. Phoebe played a new melody she’d written and asked, “What does this tune say to you, Fanny?”
Fanny listened. Then, without hesitation, she began dictating:
“Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God, Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.”
The entire hymn poured out spontaneously. It was finished in minutes.
“Blessed Assurance” captured something essential about Fanny’s faith: absolute certainty in God’s love despite circumstances that would have crushed others. She had never seen beauty, never enjoyed financial security, lost her only child, lived essentially separated from her husband, and worked for poverty wages.
Yet her hymn proclaimed not tentative hope, but assurance. Not someday peace, but present joy. Not eventual glory, but a foretaste of it right now.
Why She Wrote: The Reasons That Transform Us
Understanding why Fanny Crosby wrote reveals truths that speak powerfully to our modern struggles:
1. She Chose Gratitude Over Grievance
At eight years old, Fanny made a decision: “To weep and sigh because I’m blind, I cannot, and I won’t.” This wasn’t suppressing real pain—it was choosing to focus on what she had rather than what she lacked.
She actually believed her blindness was a gift. “If I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me,” she wrote, “I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God.”
This seems almost impossible to modern ears. We’re encouraged to acknowledge our pain, process our trauma, name our losses. And we should. But Fanny shows us something beyond that: the possibility of genuine thanksgiving for the very thing that wounded us, because of how God has used it.
This matters for you if: You’re stuck in bitterness about what you’ve lost or what you never had. Fanny challenges us to ask: What if the very limitation I resent is the thing God wants to use most powerfully?
2. She Saw What Others Couldn’t
The irony of Fanny’s life is profound: the blind woman saw more clearly than most sighted people. While others were distracted by appearances and temporary things, she focused on eternal realities.
Her hymns are filled with visual language—glory, light, beauty, color. She wrote about things she’d never physically seen but understood spiritually. “Blessed Assurance” speaks of a “foretaste of glory divine”—she couldn’t see earthly glory, but she somehow glimpsed heavenly glory.
This explains why her hymns feel so immediate and real. She wasn’t describing religious concepts—she was describing her actual experience of God’s presence.
This matters for you if: You feel like your limitations disqualify you from spiritual depth. Fanny proves that physical ability and spiritual vision are entirely separate. Sometimes the absence of physical sight makes spiritual sight clearer.
3. She Transformed Pain Into Ministry
Fanny could have become a recluse, protecting herself from a world that seemed dangerous for a blind woman. Instead, by age sixty, after her marriage had essentially failed, she moved into a run-down apartment in one of Manhattan’s worst slums to work with the poor.
She spent decades serving at rescue missions like the Bowery Mission and Jerry McAuley’s Water Street Mission. She didn’t preach at people—she sat with them, listened to their stories, prayed with them. She was known for saying, “You can’t save a man by telling him of his sins. He knows them already. Tell him there is pardon and love waiting for him.”
Her hymn “Rescue the Perishing” came directly from this work. She wrote it after a mission service where she felt God prompting her to speak to a specific young man. When she did, he broke down weeping, saying he’d promised his mother before she died that he would meet her in heaven, but he had wandered far from God. That night, he recommitted his life to Christ.
This matters for you if: You wonder if your pain has any purpose. Fanny shows that our deepest wounds often become our most effective ministry. The places where we’ve suffered are often where we can comfort others most authentically.
4. She Found Security in Identity, Not Circumstance
Fanny lived most of her adult life in near-poverty. Publishers exploited her, paying minimal fees for hymns that earned them fortunes. She lived in cramped apartments in dangerous neighborhoods. Her husband left. She had no retirement plan, no financial security, no safety net.
Yet she constantly said she had everything she needed. How? Because her security wasn’t in circumstances—it was in her identity as God’s beloved daughter. “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine”—not “I hope He’ll be mine” or “He might be mine if I’m good enough.” The assurance was complete.
This matters for you if: You live with constant anxiety about money, security, health, or the future. Fanny discovered that once you know who you are in Christ, external circumstances lose their power to determine your peace.
5. She Proved Productivity Doesn’t Require Perfect Conditions
Fanny wrote 8,000+ hymns while blind, poor, and eventually elderly. She didn’t have an office, a staff, or modern tools. She composed in her head while lying in bed at night. She dictated in the morning. She worked despite limitations that would have paralyzed most people.
She never waited for ideal circumstances to create. She simply used what she had—her mind, her memory, her voice—and produced an astonishing body of work that has comforted millions.
This matters for you if: You’re waiting for the right circumstances before you pursue your calling. Fanny proves that limitations don’t prevent productivity—they often fuel it. Your constraints might be the very thing that makes your work unique.
The Mission Worker
By the 1870s and 1880s, Fanny’s fame was at its height. Thousands knew her hymns. She could have lived comfortably, accepting speaking fees and honors.
Instead, she chose to spend much of her time working among New York’s poor and destitute. She moved into the Lower East Side, living at 9 Frankfort Street, just blocks from the city’s worst slums. She visited the Bowery Mission and Water Street Mission regularly, sitting with alcoholics, prostitutes, homeless men, and desperate families.
She considered rescue mission work her chief occupation, though she never received payment for it. “I have my diploma from the Master,” she would say. “That’s sufficient.”
People were drawn to her not because she preached at them, but because she genuinely loved them. Despite being blind and often walking dangerous streets alone, she seemed fearless. Her message was always the same: there is pardon and love waiting for you. Never give up.
The Final Years
In 1907, at age 87, Fanny moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, to care for her widowed sister Carolyn (Carrie), who had served as her secretary. After Carrie died in 1906, Fanny lived with her niece, Florence Booth.
She continued writing hymns and giving speeches well into her nineties. Even when her memory began to fail in other areas, she could still compose hymns perfectly. She remained active in rescue mission work until just months before her death.
On February 12, 1915, after a six-month illness from arteriosclerosis, Fanny Crosby died at age 94. She was buried at Mountain Grove Cemetery in Bridgeport, near her mother and family.
At her request, her gravestone was small and simple. It reads:
“Aunt Fanny She hath done what she could Fanny J. Crosby 1820-1915”
The marker doesn’t mention her thousands of hymns, her fame, her influence. Just those words: “She hath done what she could.”
The Legacy That Sings On
Fanny Crosby wrote more hymns than anyone in history. They’ve been translated into dozens of languages and sung by billions of people across every continent. Ira Sankey called her the secret to the success of the Moody-Sankey revival campaigns. The Methodist Church observed an annual “Fanny Crosby Day” for years.
Her most famous hymns include:
- “Blessed Assurance”
- “Safe in the Arms of Jesus” (her personal favorite)
- “Rescue the Perishing”
- “To God Be the Glory”
- “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior”
- “Jesus Is Tenderly Calling You Home”
- “Praise Him, Praise Him”
But her true legacy isn’t just the hymns themselves—it’s the revolution in how we think about limitation and calling.
Fanny proved that:
- Physical disability doesn’t limit spiritual impact
- Poverty doesn’t prevent productivity
- Limitation can actually enhance creativity
- Joy is a choice, not a circumstance
- Ministry flows from wounds, not perfection
In her will, she left funds to start a home for homeless men in Bridgeport—one final act of service to those society overlooked. The Fanny Crosby Memorial Home for the Aged operated from 1925 to 1966, continuing her ministry long after her death.
When asked late in life about her blindness, she said simply: “When I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior.”
The blind woman would finally see. And the glory she had only tasted would be complete.
Complete Hymn Text: “Blessed Assurance”
Written by Fanny J. Crosby, 1873 Music by Phoebe Palmer Knapp, 1873
Verse 1 Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God, Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.
Refrain This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Savior all the day long; This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Savior all the day long.
Verse 2 Perfect submission, perfect delight, Visions of rapture now burst on my sight; Angels descending, bring from above Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.
Verse 3 Perfect submission, all is at rest, I in my Savior am happy and blest; Watching and waiting, looking above, Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.
This hymn is in the public domain.
Sources and Historical References
Primary Autobiographical Sources:
- Crosby, Fanny J. Fanny Crosby’s Life-Story. New York: Every Where Publishing Co., 1903.
- Crosby, Fanny J. Memories of Eighty Years. Boston: James H. Earle & Company, 1906.
Major Biographical Works:
- Blumhofer, Edith L. Her Heart Can See: The Life and Hymns of Fanny J. Crosby. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005. [Most comprehensive modern biography]
- Ruffin, Bernard. Fanny Crosby. Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour and Company, 1976.
- Hearn, Chester G., and S. Ann Hearn. Fanny Crosby: Safe in the Arms of Jesus. Fort Washington, PA: CLC Publications, 2011.
Historical and Reference Sources:
- “Fanny Crosby,” Britannica Encyclopedia, updated May 2022.
- “Frances Jane Crosby,” Encyclopedia.com (Women in American Religious History).
- Crosby & Newton Museum, Olney, Buckinghamshire (historical archives).
- Hymnology Archive: Fanny Crosby collection (www.hymnologyarchive.com).
- UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive: Historical recordings of Crosby hymns.
Mission Work Documentation:
- The Bowery Mission Archives: Fanny Crosby’s work in New York rescue missions (www.bowery.org).
- History of Missiology, Boston University: “Crosby, Fanny (1820-1915)” rescue mission profile.
- New York Institution for the Blind records (1835-1858).
Hymn Research:
- “Blessed Assurance” composition details: Written 1873, music by Phoebe Palmer Knapp.
- Biglow & Main Company hymnal collections (primary publishers of Crosby’s works).
- Sankey, Ira D. My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns. 1906. [Details Moody-Sankey campaigns].
- Research on Crosby’s 200+ pseudonyms in The Story of Our Hymns (Haeussler, 1954).
Additional Historical Context:
- Marriage records: Alexander Van Alstyne (married March 5, 1858).
- Death certificate and obituary: New York Times, “Fanny Crosby, Blind Hymn Writer, Dies,” February 13, 1915.
- Cemetery records: Mountain Grove Cemetery, Bridgeport, Connecticut.
- Fanny Crosby Memorial Home for the Aged (1925-1966), Bridgeport Rescue Mission archives.
Published Poetry Collections:
- The Blind Girl, and Other Poems (1844)
- Monterey, and Other Poems (1851)
- A Wreath of Columbia’s Flowers (1858)
- Bells at Evening and Other Verses (1897, with biographical sketch by Rev. Robert Lowry)
What limitations in your life might God want to use for His glory? What would change if you chose, like Fanny, to focus on what you have rather than what you lack?