Mrs. Frances Jane Crosby Van Alstyne (1820-1915) produced those outstanding spiritual songs: “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,” “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour,” “Rescue the Perishing,” “Some Day the Silver Cord Will Break,” “Blessed Assurance,” “Thou, My Everlasting Portion,” and “Saviour, More Than Life to Me.”
Frances Jane was born on March 24, in Southeast, Patnam County, New York, in the family’s one story cottage. Her mother was a plucky woman “of the New England type.” Her father, John Crosby, died before she was twelve months old. Fanny tells her own story:
“When about six weeks old I was taken sick and my eyes grew very weak and those who had charge of me poulticed my eyes. Their lack of knowledge and skill destroyed my sight forever. As I grew older, they told me I would never see the faces of my friends, the flowers of the field, the blue of the skies, or the golden beauty of the stars.
“When my dear mother knew that I was to be shut out from all the beauties of the natural world, she told me, in my girlhood, that two of the world’s greatest poets were blind, and that sometimes Providence deprived persons of some physical faculty in order that the spiritual insight might more fully awake. I remember well the day she read to me, with deep expression, Milton’s sonnet on his blindness:
Doth God exact day labor, light denied,
I fondly ask? But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best; His state
Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.
“Soon I learned what other children possessed, but I made up my mind to store away a little jewel in my heart, which I called Content. This has been the comfort of my whole life. When I was eight years of age, I wrote:
“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.”
In those formative years the Bible was her textbook. “It was my grandmother who brought the Bible to me, and me to the Bible.” From her amazement of the Bible she never recovered. At ninety, she enthused, “My love for the Holy Bible and its sacred truth is stronger and more precious to me at ninety than at nineteen!”
From age fifteen, she was educated at an institution for the blind in New York City, where she studied for twelve years, then taught for another eleven years, until her marriage in 1858. Though she grew up with a decided religious bent, it was not until the age of thirty, during an evangelistic meeting, that she personally entered in at “the Door” and obeyed the gospel.
When thirty-eight, she married Alexander Van Alstyne, a blind teacher at the Institute. Fanny’s biographers seldom mention anything about “Van.” He never achieved the celebrity status that his wife enjoyed, but neither did he discourage her from her work (all told, Fanny’s poetic works mount up to about 8,000 pieces). Van wrote the music for a number of Fanny’s songs. They lived happily together for forty-four years until “Van went to his Father’s house in the year 1902.”
Fanny shined in personal work, in strengthening individuals. She saw that we all have our days of sorrow, but that we also have our seasons of joy. She chose to habitually look on the bright side. Her typical greeting rang out, “Bless your dear soul, I am so happy to see you.”
She would take an eager preacher by the arm, and mother him with her own homey homilies. “I have been thinking about you. You are a young minister of God. You never have to apologize for your message. Be careful and guard against fads, cranks and schisms; for these have done more real harm to the growth of the Kingdom of God among men than anything else I have known. Once a man came into a meeting at which I was present and after having listened to a stirring address on foreign missions stood up and said with a nasal whine: ‘Talk about foreign missions! Why, there is plenty of work to do at home. Go down on the streets of our city and see our boys and young men. Go to church and see forty bonnets to one bald pate. It’s time, brothers and sisters, that we went to work at home; and if you don’t look out, brothers and sisters, there will not be men enough in heaven to sing bass.”‘
She said she never felt safe in the company of someone with a pious, whining voice. She considered herself a careful student of human nature. “I have seldom made a mistake in the selection of my friends during these ninety years. Once in a while I have been fooled by frauds, but not often.”
The blind poetess was the perennial novelty who knew every president from Andrew Jackson to Teddy Rossevelt. But she chiefly prized the spiritual fellowship of stalwarts like D. L. Moody, Ira Sankey, George B. Stebbins, William H. Doane, P. P. Bliss, James McGranahan, and Robert Lowry. These were her comrades in arms. Moody was a special encouragement. It was in his massive gospel campaigns that Ira Sankey’s clear voice gave wings to Crosby’s hymns in England and America. She described Moody as “the biggest piece of humanity this nation has yet produced!”
All around, her spiritual eyes saw hearts that were broken, and souls that were going through their own personal Gethsemane. We are told that the Israelites’ journey through the desert brought them to a place where they found the water so bitter that they could not drink it. Therefore the encampment was named Marah. For those who had come to the bitter waters of life, she wrote this poem:
Not always on the mountain
The sweetest flowers we find,
But sometimes in the valley,
With cypress branches twined
We see their buds unclosing,
Their blossoms bending low,
A hallowed fragrance breathing
Where Marah’s waters flow.
O valley of submission,
Where once the Son of God,
Our precious, loving Saviour,
In lonely silence trod.
And when our hearts are breaking,
To Him we there may go,
Assured that He is nearest,
Where Marah’s waters flow.
O valley of submission,
Where, leaning on His breast,
We tell Him all our sorrow,
And feel the calm of rest.
Tho’ oft He gently leads us,
Where verdant pastures grow
His Mercy shines the brightest
Where Marah’s waters flow.
A Little While
A little while to sow in tears and weakness
The precious seed along the vernal plain,
Till into life the tender blade expanding
Fresh promise gives of summer’s ripening grain.
A little while of patient, earnest labor,
For His dear sake, our best and truest Friend;
A little while to wait for His Appearing,
And then the joy that nevermore shall end.
A little while to bear the cross for Jesus
And meet the foe that once He overcame;
To stand unmoved, the Sword of Truth uplifting,
And through its power to conquer in His name.
A little while around His throne to gather
For one sweet hour within the house of prayer;
A little while when, heart with heart communing,
We know by faith that He Himself is there.
A little while to weep for those who cherish
As one by one they near the river’s brink,
A little while to catch their sweet assurance
That we in heaven shall find each broken link.
A little while! and then the glorious dawning
Of that fair morn beyond the swelling tide,
When we shall wake, and in our Saviour’s likeness,
Perfect and pure, we shall be satisfied.
–Fanny J. Crosby