Pass me not, O gentle Savior

Pass me not, O gentle Savior. Fanny Crosby* (1820-1915). This was the first of Crosby’s hymns to become famous. It was written in 1868, following a visit to a worship service in a Manhattan prison, where Crosby heard a prisoner cry out ‘Good Lord, do not pass me by’ (Reynolds, 1990, p. 226). It was published in William Howard Doane*’s Songs of Devotion for Christian Associations (1870). Carlton R. Young*, noting that the hymn is based on the blind beggar’s cry to Jesus (Matthew 20: 29-34; Mark 10: 46-52; Luke 18: 35-43), says that ‘the hymn has been rightly criticized for its faulty exegesis of this scripture since it is not Jesus who is calling, but the beggar; further, it is contrary to...

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