Blessed Assurance

Frances Jane Crosby lost her sight at six weeks old, and refused all her life to count it loss: how in the world could I have lived such a helpful life had I not been blind? she asked — adding that the first face she would ever see would be her Saviour's. She taught at the New York Institution for the Blind, knew presidents, and wrote more than eight thousand hymn texts, so many that publishers issued them under dozens of pseudonyms.

One day in 1873 her friend Phoebe Knapp — wife of the founder of Metropolitan Life — played her a new melody and asked, what does this tune say? Fanny listened, clapped her hands, and answered at once: blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! The words followed within minutes, complete with their audacious claim: born of his Spirit, washed in his blood, an heir of salvation enjoying a foretaste of glory divine.

The hymn is 1 John set to music — these things have I written... that ye may know — and its refrain made testimony singable for a whole era: this is my story, this is my song, praising my Saviour all the day long. Fanny died at ninety-four; her tombstone carries four words: she hath done what she could.