Fanny Crosby by Bernard Ruffin

Author:Bernard Ruffin [RUFFIN, BERNARD]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62416-427-9
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 1976-03-29T05:00:00+00:00

Fanny spent several days each week at the offices of Biglow and Main, was active in Christian work among the poor and prisoners, and often directed evening activities in tenement houses. She also was receiving many invitations to speak or preach and was traveling a great deal.

Remarkably, she journeyed alone. She would not allow blindness to hinder her activities, and she refused to let people treat her like an invalid.

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HOME MISSIONS

Any hopes Fanny may have entertained of collaborating with Philip Bliss were dashed forever shortly after Christmas 1876. Bliss and his wife, en route to join an evangelical campaign in Chicago, perished in a train wreck.

The death of Bliss, who was just thirty-eight, “cast a cloud” over Fanny’s spirit. Soon she and her colleagues at Biglow and Main were editing his last hymns, a publishing venture jointly undertaken with John Church in Cincinnati. Many of the hymns were incomplete poems that his partner, Major Whittle, sadly undertook to finish. The collection was published in 1877.

Fanny did not confine her literary efforts to sacred songs. She wrote poems to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and other events, and she continued to write secular songs. Although she had grown increasingly religious over the past two decades, she still enjoyed writing love lyrics.

At her speaking engagements, which often took her away from New York, her talks were like her hymns: simple, direct, and personal. This quality of intimacy, combined with the love and joy she came to radiate in midlife, made her a popular speaker. On some occasions, lines of people reportedly wrapped around an entire city block, hoping to get in.

Fanny would take the podium with her famous greeting: “God bless your dear hearts! I’m so happy to be with you!” She always held a little book, which many thought contained notes in Braille but which only served, she confided, to give her security. She would say something like this:

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