Our Hymns and how they came about
Next in our series we look at another hymn writer with a handicap, this time a lady who lost her sight as a young child. Knowing this puts some of her hymns into focus with which perhaps we might otherwise find difficulty in identifying, such as “Hold Thou my hand . . . . I dare not take one step without Thine aid”. Like most blind people, while she coped well in familiar surroundings she knew only too well the feeling of helplessness when alone in strange places. But she also saw the parallel with the sort of situation we all may well find ourselves in, sighted or not, when everyday life suddenly becomes unfamiliar territory. Then we, too, either abandon pride and ask for help, or else we blunder on with disastrous results, which is really rather foolish when there is a Guide just waiting for us to ask ! That her prayer was answered is clear from another of her hymns, “All the way my Saviour leads me” and then, supremely, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine !”
Fanny Crosby, or Mrs.Frances van Alstyne as she became when she married, wrote many hymns but we would still owe her a great deal if she had given us only these, and if we can truly claim that our Saviour leads us all the way then we shall also be able to join her in singing another of her hymns “To God be the glory. Great things he has done !”
Like the lady in our previous item on hymn writers, Charlotte Elliott also overcame a disability to become a writer we still cherish today. She had a local connection with Huntingdonshire where her grandfather, one of the leaders of the evangelical movement in the Church of England, was vicar of the village of Yelling, although her parents had moved to London. When she was 30 she had a serious illness which left her an invalid for the rest of her life and she was very disappointed that this prevented her from continuing her active Christian work. Then one day a visiting evangelist asked her if she was a Christian. She was hurt and went off in a bit of a huff. But the question wouldn’t go away and eventually she realised that although she had been so busy in the church she had never actually committed herself to Christ. Perhaps, like some others we meet, she was trusting in someone else’s faith, her grandfather for example, for her salvation. Humbled she went back and asked the man how she could find Christ. To her surprise he answered “Come to Him now, just as you are”. She did and afterwards she wrote “Just as I am, without one plea but that Thy blood was shed for me, and that Thou bidst me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come”. Reading through the words of that hymn will give some idea of the struggle she went through before taking that step but, when she died, over a thousand letters were found thanking her for that hymn. They included one from the son-in-law of the poet Wordsworth saying what a help it had been to his wife Dora in her last illness and that her mother said it formed part of her daily prayers. Dora’s gravestone in Grasmere churchyard has carved on it a lamb with the words “O Lamb of God, I come”..
