22. Frances Ridley Havergal (1836–1879)
22
Frances Ridley Havergal
1836–1879
Frances Ridley Havergal was to Great Britain what Fanny Crosby was to the United States, and the two women had a great deal in common. Both had to put up with physical limitations: Crosby was blind, and Havergal endured what the Victorians called “delicate health,” including a great deal of pain, all her life. Each of them was converted early in life and then had a deeper life experience in later years. Both were gifted singers and instrumentalists as well as gifted writers, and both had phenomenal memories.
Though they never met on earth, the two Franceses corresponded and loved one another across the miles. Havergal sent Fanny Crosby a long poem, “An English Tribute to Fanny Crosby,” which ends:
Dear blind sister over the sea.
An English heart goes forth to thee!
We are linked by a cable of faith and song,
Flashing bright sympathy swift along;
One in the east and one in the west,
Singing for Him whom our souls love best;
“Singing for Jesus,” telling His love,
All the way to our home above,
Where the severing sea, with its restless tide,
Never shall hinder, and never divide.
Sister, what will our meeting be,
When our hearts shall sing and our eyes shall see!
While Fanny Crosby excelled in writing the gospel songs, Frances Ridley Havergal’s songs were more of a devotional nature, calling believers to a deeper dedication to Christ. Her most famous dedication hymn is “Take My Life and Let It Be,” which she wrote on February 4, 1874, after a thrilling night of praise and prayer because of a very special victory the Lord had given her.
But we are also familiar with “Lord, Speak to Me that I May Speak,” “Like a River Glorious,” “Who Is on the Lord’s Side?” and “I Gave My Life for Thee.”
Frances Ridley Havergal was born December 14, 1836, in Astley, Worcestershire, England, where her father, William Henry Havergal, was vicar of the Astley Anglican church. She inherited her musical ability from her father, who was quite well known as a writer and publisher of church music. She learned to read by the time she was three, and when she was four, she was reading the Bible.
She discovered her talent for writing verse when she was seven and kept a notebook of what most people would call childish rhymes. But those rhymes prepared the way for her prolific writing ministry in later years. Her mother often said to her, “Fanny dear, pray to God to prepare you for all that He is preparing for you.” Frances even wrote long letters in rhyme to her brother Frank and to some of her young friends. One of her little poems proved to be prophetic.
Sunday is a pleasant day,
When we to church do go;
For there we sing and read and pray,
And hear the sermon too.
And if we love to pray and read
While we are in our youth,
The Lord will help us in our need
And keep us in His truth.
Her mother died when Frances was only eleven years old. On that day, July 5, 1848, Frances wrote in her notebook:
Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
Neither can man’s heart conceive,
The blessed things God hath prepared
For those who love Him and believe.
God had been working in her heart, and she desperately wanted to know for sure that she was converted and going to heaven. The struggle lasted more than three years. A sermon she heard on divine judgment “haunted” her, and each time she witnessed the Lord’s Supper she was deeply moved. But it was while she was away at school in 1851 that she found the peace of salvation. God used the witness of a newly converted friend and the counsel of Miss Caroline Cook, who later became her stepmother, to bring her assurances of eternal life.
Frances spent a year in Germany and there received professional confirmation that she did indeed have musical and poetic gifts of the highest quality. A remarkable student, she was competent not only in music and writing, but also in languages: she knew Greek, Hebrew, Latin, German, French, and Italian. According to her sister Maria, Frances had memorized all of the Gospels and Epistles, as well as Isaiah (her favorite book), the Psalms, the Minor Prophets, and Revelation!
In 1858 she returned to Germany with her father, who was seeking further treatment for his afflicted eyes; it was then that she wrote “I Gave My Life for Thee.” Visiting a pastor’s home, she saw a picture of the crucifixion on the wall, and under it the motto, “I did this for thee. What hast thou done for me?” Quickly she took a pencil and wrote the words that are so familiar to Christians everywhere; but she was dissatisfied with them, so she threw the paper in the fire. The paper immediately came out unharmed! She kept the poem and later showed it to her father, who not only encouraged her to keep it but also wrote a tune for it. However, the tune we usually use today was written by Philip P. Bliss.
As Frances matured, she found herself being used by God in writing, teaching the Bible, visiting the poor and afflicted, and corresponding with people who felt led to share their problems with her. She taught a children’s Sunday school class at whatever church her father was pastoring, and she kept a permanent register of her students’ names so that she might pray for them. I wonder what would happen to our children and young people if each teacher who had ministered to them continued to pray for them?
In 1865, Frances was very ill, at a time when many opportunities were open to her. “I am held back from much I wanted to do in every way, and have had to lay poetizing aside,” she wrote in 1866. “And yet such open doors seem set before me. Perhaps this check is sent that I may consecrate what I do more entirely. . . . I suppose that God’s crosses are often made of most unexpected and strange material.”1 In 1869, her first book, Ministry of Song, was published. A decade earlier her doctor had told her that she must choose between writing and living, because her health would not permit her to do both. “Did you ever hear of anyone being very much used for Christ who did not have some special waiting time, some complete upset of all his or her plans?” she wrote. When Ministry of Song was published, Frances testified that she saw “the evident wisdom of having been kept nine years waiting in the shade.”
There were other tests besides her recurring illnesses and almost constant weakness. In 1874, her American publisher went bankrupt in an economic crash; since she had an exclusive contract with him, this put an end to her American publishing until the business could get back on its feet again. This meant, of course, a loss of income as well.
“Two months ago, this would have been a real trial to me,” she wrote to a friend, “for I had built a good deal on my American prospects; now, ‘Thy will be done’ is not a sigh but only a song! . . . I have not a fear, or a doubt, or a care, or a shadow upon the sunshine of my heart.”
The secret of her victory was found in an experience she had on December 2, 1873, just two months before she received news of the crash. A friend had mailed her a copy of a little booklet entitled All for Jesus. It kindled in her heart a deep desire for greater consecration and wider usefulness, and she began to pray to that end. God answered her prayers. She wrote: “Yes, it was on Advent Sunday, December 2nd, 1873, I first saw clearly the blessedness of true consecration. I saw it as a flash of electric light. . . . There must be full surrender before there can be full blessedness.” She discovered the meaning of 1 John 1:7 and the importance of trusting Christ to keep her as well as to save her. She totally rejected all ideas of “sinless perfection,” but claimed the clear biblical teaching of constant victory. “Not a coming to be cleansed in the fountain only,” she explained, “but a remaining in the fountain, so that it may and can go on cleansing.” Her knowledge of Greek told her that the verb in 1 John 1:9 is present—“keeps on cleansing.” The next time you sing “Like a River Glorious,” keep in mind that it is Frances Ridley Havergal’s testimony to the reality of the victorious Christian life.
Frances never sat down with the determination to write a poem or a song. “Writing is praying with me,” she said, “for I never seem to write even a verse by myself, and feel like a little child writing; you know a child would look up at every sentence and say, ‘And what shall I say next?’ That is just what I do.” It was her conviction that God had a message for her to share and that he would direct her in the writing of it. If nothing came to her, she accepted the silence and went on to other things. “The Master has not put a chest of poetic gold into my possession and said, ‘Now use it as you like!’” she wrote to a friend. “But He keeps the gold, and gives it to me piece by piece just when He will and as much as He will, and no more.” Sometimes that gold included chords and melodies as well, for Frances was an accomplished musician.
In 1876, Frances went through another fiery trial: the offices of her British publisher burned down, and with it went the complete manuscript and plates of Songs of Grace and Glory, which she had recently completed. She had not kept a copy of much of this material, so she had to begin all over again, not only with the words but also the music. “I have thanked Him for it,” she wrote to her sisters, “more than I have prayed about it. It is just what He did with me last year, it is another turned lesson.” God gave her sufficient health and strength to do the work again.
Her daily quiet time with the Lord was kept with loving discipline, and she always devoted extra time to serious Bible study. (One wishes that some of our contemporary composers would spend more time in their Bibles and put more solid theology into their songs.) Hymn writing was not a business with Frances; it was a ministry. Even her singing and playing in public were not considered performances but opportunities for her to glorify Christ and share him with others. She had a very sane and scriptural view of true consecration.
“Consecration is not so much a step as a course,” she wrote in her devotional classic Kept for the Master’s Use, “not so much an act as a position to which a course of action inseparably belongs. . . . Does this mean that we are always to be doing some definitely religious work, as it is called? No, but all that we do is to be always definitely done for Him.”2 There was a time in her life when she decided she would not sing or play secular songs, although she did not criticize those who did so. She could have become a famous concert artist had she pursued such a career, but to her, it was not consistent with her Christian witness. She made this decision several months before she wrote:
Take my lips, and let me sing,
Always, only, for my King.
During 1873, on a visit to Switzerland, she was almost killed in a climbing accident; and in 1874 she suffered for eight months with typhoid fever. But she continued to write, as the Lord enabled her, and she carried on a wide correspondence. In one six-month period, she received over six hundred letters.
Her last year of ministry on earth was 1879. She kept a “Journal of Mercies,” and some of the entries are interesting when you consider her weakened condition. “Able to come downstairs for the first time,” she wrote on New Year’s Day. On January 14, she wrote, “Being withheld from resuming work, and sense of God’s wise hand in it.” “Strength for extra pulls” was the entry for February 5, and on February 23 she wrote, “Freedom from pain.”
During those difficult days, she also kept a prayer list with daily needs and special requests for each day. She also made a list of “work for 1879, if the Lord wills.” On that list was her desire to prepare for the press Kept for the Master’s Use, and God granted her that desire. She finished revising the proofs shortly before her death on June 3, 1879. At the time, she was living at Caswall Bay in Wales, near Swansea; but the family took her body back to Astley where she was buried on June 9 beside other family members in the beloved churchyard of her childhood days.
The next year, her sister Maria published Memorials of Frances Ridley Havergal (London: James Nisbet), a book that is now long out of print. Baker Books has reprinted Kept for the Master’s Use and Royal Bounty, two of her finest devotional books. Both books reveal her love for Scripture and her ability to understand and teach it. She was far more than a musician and poetess. She was a unique woman with a penetrating ministry that was fashioned in the furnace of suffering.
When her doctor said to her, “Goodbye, I shall not see you again,” Frances asked, “Then do you really think I am going?” He replied, “Yes.”
“Today?” she asked, and he said, “Probably.”
Her response was, “Beautiful—too good to be true!” But that would be the response of any believer who had honestly said:
Take my life, and let it be,
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee!