To God be the glory! Great things he has done

Among the enormous output of verse from Fanny Crosby, (Frances van Alstyne) there is inevitably much which is thin and repetitive, and has proved transitory. This hymn, however, has repeatedly demonstrated its lasting value, even when editors of a different theological stamp from hers have remoulded much of it. It first emerged with a title ‘Praise for Redemption’ in the 1875 American collection Brightest and Best edited by Wm H Doane and Robert Lowry. Ira D Sankey surprisingly omitted it from his defining 6-vol American series Gospel Hymns (which may have delayed its wider recognition) but introduced it to Britain in his 1873–74 tour with D L Moody—printed if rarely sung. It featured in many N American Sunday School songbooks, and was included in Sankey’s Sacred Songs and Solos (published in the UK), Redemption Songs, the 1900 Hymns of Light and Love, and Golden Bells (1925 edn). Its initial success in N America, according to Paul Davis outselling many of the secular hit songs of the day, was followed by comparative neglect. But the hymn enjoyed a revival of interest through the Billy Graham crusades.

Song-leader Cliff Barrows featured it, almost unnoticed, in a 1950 campaign collection; its inclusion in his Greater London Crusade Song Book of 1954 on the recommendation of Frank Colquhoun (then working with the World Evangelical Alliance) gave it a new lease of life in Britain. Its popularity during that year’s Harringay crusade (‘a virtual theme song’) persuaded Graham and Barrows to feature it at Nashville, Tennessee, that year, from which it gained rapid worldwide recognition. The 1965 Anglican Hymn Book, through its music editor Robin Sheldon, stood almost alone (though Erik Routley followed in 1985) in trying to do without the refrain, which was usually sung anyway and later restored to the text. The complete hymn finally reached A&M (Common Praise) in 2000.

Apart from ‘has’ for ‘hath’ (4 times), the only change in the present book is at 3.4; where HTC replaces ‘our wonder, our transport’ with ‘our … gladness’ and others prefer ‘… rapture’, Praise! has chosen to recast the line as here. The Sing Glory editors (1999) were happy to accept this suggestion and in the event reached publication first. GH replaced ‘all’ with ‘we’ at 1.4; both words can be defended biblically, but the original is retained here. Others have found 1.3 and 2.3 hard to take, and some hyper-Calvinist or ‘catholic’ editors have made other changes, but the Reformed scholar J Alec Motyer declared stz 2 to be a clearly authentic summary of the Christian gospel. It has a firm foundation in the experience of the penitent thief in Luke 23:39–43. The refrain’s line 2, ‘Let the earth hear his voice’ was used as the theme of the 4000-strong landmark International Congress on World Evangelization held in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1974. This ‘Congress slogan [was] emblazoned above the platform in the six official languages’ (writes Timothy Dudley-Smith in John Stott: A Global Ministry, 2001). The complete hymn is more doctrinally objective than most ‘gospel hymnody’ of this genre; its 1st line and title reflects the motto inscribed on many of J S Bach’s mss: Soli Deo Gloria—to God alone be glory.

The hymn has almost invariably been sung to William H Doane’s tune TO GOD BE THE GLORY, variously arranged in the key of either G or A flat. Fanny Crosby’s favourite collaborator composed it for these words; both appeared together in the 1870 Songs of Devotion. Linda Mawson’s arrangement was made for Praise! The Scottish Church Hymnary, 3rd Edn (1973) shared the qualms which AHB had felt about the chorus, and tried to resolve the problem by setting the words to ST DENIO (248), an experiment abandoned by CH4 in 2005. In Worship and Rejoice (2001) and earlier American books, Doane’s music is set to Margaret Clarkson’s Sing praise to the Father, Creator and King, written 1964–65, and for which she also composed her own tune. Another text matching the hymn’s distinctive metre is How sweet is the story of God’s boundless love by R D Edwards. In 2004 Donald Hustad published a detailed study of the hymn’s history and meaning, beginning, ‘If a hymn die, can it live again? … the answer is “yes, thanks be to God!

b Southeast, Putnam County, NY, USA 1820, d 1915. Born into the extensive Crosby clan, the 17th-c founders of Harvard College, in a single-storey cottage in a rural community, Puritan in faith and culture, she was blinded when 6 weeks old. This was due to a disastrous misjudgement by an unqualified doctor who prescribed a hot mustard poultice for her inflamed eyes which destroyed her sight. Her father died that same year; widowed at 21, her mother entrusted Fanny’s upbringing to the child’s godly and sensitive grandmother. Fanny soon developed a keen ear and extraordinarily retentive mind, memorizing the Pentateuch, the Gospels, Proverbs, the Song of Songs, Ruth, and many Psalms. At 12 she entered the New York School (or Institution) for the Blind, remaining until she was 24 and learning to love classic poetry as well as writing comic verse, and to which she later returned aged 27 as a teacher. In Nov 1850 came a decisive moment of commitment during the Broadway Tabernacle’s ‘revival’ meetings, when the ‘something missing’ in her busy religious activities was fully met as they sang Alas, and did my Saviour bleed (411). In 1858 she married her fellow-student and Braille instructor, the blind musician Alexander van Alstyne. Their one baby died in infancy; they lived briefly on Long Island before returning to Manhattan in 1860, but later came to live largely separate lives. Fanny’s home from 1900 was in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and ‘Van’ died in 1902.

Beginning to write verse when she was 7 or 8, Fanny began her ‘real writing of Christian hymns’ as an adult, prompted by Wm B Bradbury. She went on to write several thousand (according to Grove, 9000) gospel songs and hymns, in regular metre with a straightforward, experience-centred message, usually set to simple, instantly singable tunes, which often outsold the secular chart-toppers of the day. For many years she wrote 3 or 4 a week, usually at night, which were then copied from her memory in the morning. Some were first published anonymously or using up to 200 other names; the bulk of them date from 1864 to 1889, the 1870s (by which time she was well-known) proving a specially productive decade. From her first text onwards (We are going, we are going, to a home beyond the skies) heaven was a frequent theme. But the first to gain worldwide use was Pass me not, O gentle Saviour (1868) on a topic suggested by Wm H Doane, which was very popular in the Moody and Sankey missions as in London in 1874. Ira Sankey sang her hymns in public for some time before they met, and then became a great friend, notably after he too lost his sight. She gave away most of her earnings, to further the work of the gospel particularly among New York city’s alcoholics and homeless people in whom she also took a practical and generous interest. Though she was the guest and even personal friend of 6 US presidents, her own urban lifestyle remained simple. Among varied biographies are Fanny Crosby’s Story by S Trevena Jackson (a devotional memoir, 1915); Fanny Crosby by Bernard Ruffin (1976); Fanny Crosby speaks again (a useful summary plus 120 texts, edited by Donald P Hustad, 1977); Fanny Crosby by Bonnie C Harvey (1999) and Her Heart Can See (a major biography by Edith L Blumhofer, 2005); see also the notes to Frances Havergal. Although many of her hymns have now passed out of fashion, 10 were chosen for Hymns of Faith (1964) while GH had 12 and CH, 7. The N American Worship and Rejoice (2001) has 6. Nos.328, 670, 676, 869.