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Opened Treasures
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Frances Ridley Havergal ^ fK* Compiled by William J. Pell 'The LORD shall open unto thee His good treasure"
DEUTERONOMY 28:12
LOIZEAUX BROTHERS
Neptune, New Jersey
FIRST EDITION OCTOBER
Copyright, LOIZEAUX BROTHERS.
Inc.
A Nonprofit Organization, Devoted to the Lord's Work, and to the Spread of His Truth Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-2106.'i
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Preface The meditations and songs of Frances Ridley Havergal have provided solace, comfort, and everlasting peace to thousands of souls. Her ministry in poetry and prose is ever being used by the Spirit of God to teach, comfort, exhort, and convict.
All her poetry and prose is saturated with the living Word of God ; it has a freshness and power which only the eternal dew of heavenly truth could impart.
Frances always looked to the Lord for her messages before writing anything.
On one occasion she wrote to her sister of her strong belief that, "If I am to write to any good, a great deal of living must go into a very little writing."
In an effort to preserve her prose for this generation this volume has been published. We have sought to include virtually all her prose writings and to couple with them selections from her poetry.
The work of selecting the poetry has been done by Mabel J. Carter.
Those who have worked on the compilation and production of this book have testified to having received a great blessing from their labor of love.
The book is now sent forth with the earnest desire that it, like its author, Frances Ridley Havergal, may run over all denominational barriers and be acceptable and helpful to the saints, for "In prayer and praise the saints appear as one."
William J. Pell Qtnnd Rapids, Michigan
; ;
Take my life, and let it be Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my moments and my days; Let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take my hands, and let them move At the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet, and let them be Swift and beautiful for Thee.
Take my voice, and let me sing, Always, only, for my King.
Take my lips, and let them be Filled with messages for Thee.
Take my silver and my gold Not a mite would I withhold.
Take my intellect, and use Every power as Thou shalt choose.
Take my will, and make it Thine.
It shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart, it is Thine own It shall be Thy royal throne.
Take my love; my Lord, I pour At Thy feet its treasure-store.
Take myself, and I will be Ever, only, all for Thee.
Frances Ridley Havergal Written February i, 187U Other familiar hymns by Frances Ridley Havergal:
Another Year is Dawning I Could Not Do Without Thee True-hearted, Whole-hearted Saviour, Precious Saviour 1 Am Trusting Thee, Lord Jesus Who Is on the Lord's Side?
Lord, Speak to Me I Gave My Life for Thee Standing at the Portal of the Opening Year
Frances Ridley Havergal A FEW MONTHS before Princess Victoria succeeded to the throne, Frances Ridley Havergal, youngest of the six children of Rev. William Henry and Jane Havergal, was born on December 14, 1836 at her father's rectory in the little English village of Astley, in Worcestershire.
In her brief lifetime of forty-two years, Frances Havergal achieved fame and influence unusual for a woman of that era.
By the time of her death one of her volumes of poetry had reached its 30th edition. The Ministry of Song was in its 38th edition, and her hymns and lyrics in magazines were beyond even such circulation.
Publication of Under His Shadow, containing her last poems, exceeded 90,000 — a popularity unprecedented in English hymnody.
Yet Frances Ridley Havergal was an understandable — though exceptionally gifted — product of her time and environment. Her mother had been the "lovely Jane Head," her father was a talented, well-trained musician versed in psalmody, composer of hundreds of chants, tunes, and cathedral services, and an ardent supporter of foreign missions as well as an able preacher.
Theirs was a happy home, marked by their prayers and example in searching the Scriptures, their cheery ways and godly activities.
Frances was a child of grace and beauty, fair-complexioned, sunny-haired, vivacious.
In spite of her extreme precocity — she could read easy books at three, the Bible at four, and began writing verses at seven — she was full of life and spirit, distinguishing herself no less in wild tree-climbing and wall-scaling than in picking up German from overhearing the lessons given to her older brothers and sisters.
She was by no means a model child — she "utterly abominated being 'talked to' " and "would do anything on earth to escape" kindly-meant admonitions. She had a very sensitive nature, especially when young, with frequent fits of unhappiness and penitence, called forth by a bit of nature, a book, or a sermon.
Frances early decided that to be a Christian was the most desirable thing in life, even while taking a "sort of savage joy" in her despondency and feelings of failure.
In later years she spoke of her early spiritual experience with frankness, when persuaded it might be helpful to others, but at the time she "could as soon speak Sanscrit" as utter a word about it to any human being.
She was often misjudged because of this reserve.
Even her sisters did not know of her inner conflicts, her natural buoyancy of temperament enabling her to pass quickly from an agony of weeping in her room to a merry burst of laughter or a sudden lighthearted scamper up and down stairs.
"Many have thought mine a comparatively thornless path," she wrote in later years, "but often, when the path was the smoothest, there were hidden thorns within.
This deep longing for a pure life, disquieted by frequent thoughts of backsliding, schooled her for the consecration evident in her writings and the understanding through which she was enabled to help countless others.
In 1845 the family moved to Worcester, where Mr. Havergal was appointed to the Rectory of St.
Nicholas.
Frances, scarcely ten years old, began teaching a Sunday School class of still younger children, and organized a favorite playmate and herself into "The Flannel Petticoat Society," described in The Four Happii Daijs, one of her few published books for children.
Shortly before Frances' twelfth birthday her mother went to be with the Lord.
She was quite unprepared for this great sorrow. Yet her mother's words to her before she died
: "Fanny dear, pray to God to prepare you for all that He is preparing for you," became a life-prayer later on.
For this "preparing" went on all through her life.
As one horizon was gained, another stretched on ahead.
So each event prepared for the one to follow.
In boarding school in England — "That single half year was perhaps the most important of any in my life" — she began to "have conscious faith and hope in Christ," and soon after her fifteenth birthday she wrote, "I committed my soul to the Saviour
. and earth and Heaven seemed brighter from that moment."
A few months later her father married again, and Frances expressed in poetry her loving satisfaction. Going with her parents to Germany, she attended school in Diisseldorf, learning
"to think in German," and achieving first place among the 110 pupils, no small feat for an English girl whose earlier education had been so casual and intermittent. Her thirst for knowledge was lifelong.
She committed to memory the entire New Testament, Psalms, Isaiah, and the Minor Prophets.
She studied, and in most cases mastered, French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
In Wales she learned enough Welsh from her donkey-girl to be able to join intelligently in Sunday services.
At the seashore she was eager for nautical information.
She taught herself harmonics by reading a treatise.
Yet she was content to sit with the smallest children in the vicar's Bible class, and often referred to the pleasure and benefit derived from his teachings.
Her confirmation in Worcester Cathedral, at 18, left deep and sacred memories. When the words, "Defend,
Lord, this Thy child with Thy heavenly grace, that she may continue Thine for ever," were solemnly pronounced over her head, "if ever my heart thrilled with earnest longing, not unmixed with joy, it did at the words, 'Thine for ever.' "
She was sensitive to Nature.
"The quiet everyday beauty of the trees and sunshine was the chief external influence upon my early childhood. Waving boughs and golden light always touched and quieted me and spoke to me and told me about God."
She was ecstatic over her first glimpse of the Alps — "that majesty of shining eternal snow" reminding her of the Psalms — remarking quaintly, "It is very diflicult to believe that David never was in Switzerland."
Frances Havergal had a double talent.
Although her poetry was better known, she was highly skilled in music, which she called "the only universal language, a sort of alphabet of the language of Heaven."
She was a skilled pianist, proficient in Bach, Handel, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Haydn, Schumann, and Schubert.
She was a contralto soloist, later putting aside her "pleasure of public applause when singing in the Philharmonic concerts" to use her gifts solely in sacred song.
She mastered harmony and counterpoint, wrote tunes for her own hymns, and prepared a volume of her father's Psalmody after his death.
At 21, stirred by the painting of the head of Christ, "Ecce Homo," in the Art Gallery of Dlisseldorf, she composed her first real hymn, "I Gave My Life for Thee," for which her father wrote the music. A later hymn, "Take My Life," written in
1874, was virtually her autobiography in poetry, each couplet describing a definite experience in her life. The line, "Take my silver and my gold," referred to her sending "nearly fifty articles" of jewelry to the Church Missionary Society, retaining for daily wear only a brooch that was a memorial of her parents, and a locket with a portrait of her niece.
Always she sought to blend her poems and music with life.
When someone described a hymn-sing as "religiously jolly," she wrote: "It is just what I wish, to get people to connect religion with all that is pleasant and joyful. Him serve with mirth."
In spite of frequent illness, Frances Havergal's spare time was crowded with Bible classes, readings for the YWCA, and extensive correspondence, especially with girls who sought her spiritual counsel and help.
Active to the last, she died on June 3, 1879, at Caswell Bay, Swansea, England, in her forty-third year, and was laid to rest in Astley churchyard, near the old rectory where she was born.
It has been said'' of her: "Frances Ridley Havergal had none of the ordinary titles to fame.
What singled her out was the note of absoluteness in her spiritual experience ... In her consecration there was no limit and no reserve.
She had learned the secret of abandonment, and she yielded herself utterly to God. By virtue of this, her writings reached and moved a multitude of souls with strange, penetrating power."
Marie D. Loizeaux * Darlow, Thomas Herbert.
Frances Kidley Havergal:
A Saint of Cod; A New Memoir.
London, Nisbct.
January
A LEADER YOU CAN TRUST
For ye have not passed this way heretofore.
Joshua 3:4
We have not passed this way heretofore, but the Lord Jesus has. "For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities" (Hebrews 4:15).
It is all untrodden and unknown ground to us, but He knows it all by personal experience ; the steep bits that take away our breath, the stony bits that make our feet ache so, the hot shadeless stretches that make us feel so exhausted, the rushing rivers that we have to pass through, our Shepherd has gone through it all before us.
Not some but all the many waters went over Him, and yet they did not quench His love. "All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over Me" (Psalm 42:7). "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it" (Song of Solomon 8:7).
He was made a perfect Leader by the things He suffered.
"To make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings .... and being made perfect, He became the Author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him"
(Hebrews 2 :10
; 5:9). For now He knows all about it, and leads us softly according as we are able to endure: "For He knoweth our frame" (Psalm 103:14). And He does not only know, with that sort of up-on-the-shelf knowledge which is often guilty of want of thought among ourselves, but He remembereth that we are dust.
"For He remembered that they were but flesh" (Psalm 78:39). Think of that when you are tempted to question the gentleness of His leading.
He is remembering all the time; and not one step will He make you take beyond what your foot is able to endure.
Never mind if you think it will not be able for the step that seems to come next; either He will so strengthen it that it shall be able, or He will call a sudden halt, and you shall not have to take it at all.
I, the Lord, am with thee, be thou not afraid!
I will help and strengthen, be thou not dismayed!
Yea, I will uphold thee with My own right hand; Thou art called and chosen in My sight to stand.
Onward then, and fear not, children of the day!
For His word shall never, never pass away!
For the year before us, oh, what rich supplies!
For the poor and needy living streams shall rise; For the sad and sinful shall His grace abound; For the faint and feeble perfect strength be found.