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Music Corner by Herb Tardiff
Tune composer Phoebe Palmer Knapp played a melody to Fanny Crosby and asked, “What does the melody say to you?” Crosby replied that the tune said,
“Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!” and proceeded to recite the entire first stanza of the now-famous hymn.
Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His spirit, washed in His blood.
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior all the day long.
Fanny Crosby, blind at the age of six weeks, was a lifelong Methodist who began
composing hymns at age six. An author of more than 8,000 gospel hymn texts, she
drew her inspiration from her own faith. Crosby published hymns under several pen
names including “Ella Dale,” “Mrs. Kate Gringley,” and “Miss Viola V. A.”
“Blessed Assurance” was published in 1873 in the monthly magazine, Guide to
Holiness. Perhaps the biggest boost came when it appeared in Gospel Songs, No. 5
by Ira Sankey and was sung extensively in the Moody and Sankey revivals in Great
Britain and the United States.
Crosby captured the poetic essence of the Wesleyan understanding of Christian
perfection in the phrase, “O what a foretaste of glory divine!” The entire hymn is
focused on heaven, a place where “perfect submission” and “perfect delight” will take
place. The earthly existence is one of “watching and waiting, looking above.” As we
submit ourselves to Christ and are “filled with His goodness” and “lost in His love,”
we are remade in Christ’s image and are moving toward Christian perfection.
The refrain calls us to “prais[e]. . . my Savior all the day long,” echoing I
Thessalonians 5:17, “Pray without ceasing.”
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