Description
Fanny Humpheries
Fanny Humphries was a talented, yet humble young woman who cultivated from a young age a desire to love and serve others in the Lord’s name. Fanny especially loved children and spent much of her life ministering to their needs. In 1846, she helped establish a school for deaf and dumb children. She helped set up institutions to assist nurses and even labored to minister to that shamed class that society so often shunned—fallen women. She ministered to the care of the poor and needy, especially the children, all her life. Her kindness and indefatigable service live on to the present day. Long after she was gone, those who knew her remembered her walking to the farthest reaches carrying food and bringing love, and returning home in the most inclement weather, soaked through. Her motives in all of this were not the honor and praise of the world. Duncan Campbell said of her:
“[She] was deaf to applause, but when someone wrote to tell of a great change in heart and life that had come to a worldly man through hearing this hymn sung, she sprang from her chair exclaiming, “Thank God! I do like to hear that.” Those, however, who knew her best felt that, beautiful as her hymns are, her life was more beautiful still.”
From the time she was just a child Fanny loved to write. Encouraged by her father and later her husband, she would compose more than 400 hymns in her lifetime. Her first book of hymns was for children. It was titled, Hymns for Little Children.
The proceeds of that first book were used to help the needy. Fanny’s desire was to bring souls to Christ—to teach in so simple and plain a way that children could understand. She knew that to teach a child you must first capture their imagination with the picturesque and then explain in the simplest of terms. One of her most enduring and beloved hymns was reportedly written by the bedside of a sick child. It was an inspired effort to explain why the Savior had to die—why it was necessary that the pure Son of Almighty God had to be crucified to save us all.
It is believed that Fanny looked beyond the city walls of Derry, Ireland and saw in the Creggan Hills, “a green hill far away”. With that imagery, she taught in powerful plainness, the most eternally fundamental doctrine of them all—the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. It has been called “the most perfect hymn in the English language.” She wrote:
There is a green hill far away,
Without a city wall,
Where the dear Lord was crucified,
Who died to save us all.
Fanny Humpheries grew up to be Cecil Frances Alexander, the Bishop’s wife and a faithful servant of the Lord she loved. She lived these very words she wrote.
Oh, dearly, dearly has He loved!
And we must love Him too,
And trust in His redeeming blood,
And try His works to do.
She died in 1895, very much beloved by all those upon whom she did the Lord’s works. She was buried in Derry Cemetery, on the very “green hill far away” that she wrote of, awaiting the day of a glorious resurrection. The other hymn for which we so often remember her—”He is Risen!” —the spiritual anthem of Easter.
Sources:
https://www.stempublishing.com/hymns/biographies/alexander.html
https://www.poemhunter.com/cecil-frances-alexander/biography/
https://www.hymnologyarchive.com/cecil-frances-alexander
https://willchapumc.org/images/Worship/allthingsbrightandbeautiful.pdf
https://www.gantshillurc.co.uk/ministers-blog/the-hymns-of-cecil-frances-alexander
https://oystermouthparish.com/hymn-of-the-month-there-is-a-green-hill
Copyright Glenn Rawson 2022
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