The hymn…was called into being through…a ser­mon preached by Dr. How­ard Cros­by who was a dis­tant rel­a­tive and dear friend of mine. He said that no Christ­ian should fear death, for if each of us was faith­ful to the grace giv­en us by Christ, the same grace that teach­es us how to live would al­so teach us how to die. His re­marks were af­ter­ward pub­lished in a news­pa­per, and they were read to me by Mr. Big­low. Not ma­ny hours af­ter I heard them I be­gan to write the hymn.

However, these words al­most didn’t see light of day. They came to pub­lic no­tice by ac­ci­dent, during a con­fer­ence Fan­ny at­tend­ed at North­field, Mass­a­chu­setts. Dur­ing the meet­ing, the great evan­gel­ist, Dwight Moo­dy, asked if Fan­ny—like so many others—would give a per­son­al tes­ti­mo­ny to the au­di­ence. Not want­ing to draw at­ten­tion to her­self, she al­most de­clined, but fin­al­ly got up to speak, and said:

There is one hymn I have writ­ten which has never been pub­lished. I call it my soul’s po­em. Somet­imes when I am trou­bled, I re­peat it to my­self, for it brings comfort to my heart.

You can’t hide a light un­der a bowl!