Frances Havergal

God's Songster

From They Knew Their God, Volume 2

The picture on the wall of her lodgings in Germany impressed the youthful twenty-one-year-old tourist, as she sat down, exhausted and weary after a strenuous day.  The words underneath, “I Gave My Life for Thee,” awakened the muse.  In a flash, the lines of a poem came into her mind, and she hastily wrote them down upon a scrap of paper.

As she read them over, they did not seem to be what she wished, so she tossed them into the open fire at the end of the room.  Strangely enough, they fell out intact.  Her father was so impressed by their merit that he composed music for them, and so the best known hymn of Frances Ridley Havergal, “Thy Life for Me,” was given to the world.

Frances was born on the 25th January, 1837, the youngest child of William Henry Havergal, Rector of Astley, Worcestershire, England, and his wife Jane.  Her five brothers and sisters gave her loving attention, and all agreed that she was a most precocious child.  By the time she was four years of age, she was able to read the Bible and also to write in quite a firm hand.  At seven, she began to compose hymns and poetry.

The previous year she had received her first spiritual impressions while listening to a discourse on the wrath of God.  Two years later, another sermon disturbed the little girl’s soul.  Although she had no clear conception of the way of salvation and was too reticent to talk to any of the family in regard to it, she felt that to be a Christian would be the highest state of happiness possible.

So great was her spiritual unrest that she finally summoned the courage to seek help from her father’s curate.  His unhappy advice was simply to pray and try harder to be good.  During the following five years, Frances, disappointed, never dared opened her heart to anyone about the distress of her soul.

Her mother passed away when she was eleven.  One of her last conversations with her small daughter never was forgotten.  “You are my youngest little girl,” the dying woman had said, “and I feel more anxious about you than the rest.  I do pray for the Holy Spirit to lead you and guide you.  And remember, nothing but the precious blood of Christ can make you clean and lovely in God’s sight.”

At thirteen, she was sent away to school, with loving admonitions on the part of an older sister.  “One of the great events of your life, Fanny,” Ellen reminded her.  Then the older girl went on to speak of God’s love to her and that He wanted her heart’s devotion in return.

After a long silence, Frances burst out in an impetuous way, “I can’t love God yet, Nellie!”

The girls’ school where she was to spend half a year was under the superintendence of a godly woman whose fervent prayer was that no scholar should leave without a movement of the Holy Spirit upon her heart.  Many of the girls returned to their homes at the close of the session touched by divine grace.

Frances was affected, but a spirit of hopelessness and despair of ever obtaining salvation settled down upon her, and she left the school for the Christmas holidays under a cloud of doubt and spiritual bewilderment.  Of that unhappy period of her life, she wrote later, “At any time I would willingly have lost or suffered anything, might it but have brought me to the attainment of ‘full assurance.’”

February, 1851, was a time forever memorable to her, because it was then that the darkness of her spiritual life began to give way to the sunshine of God’s love.  A friend, Miss Cooke, interested in the young girl’s Christian life and whom Mr. Havergal later made his wife, drew her aside and lovingly endeavored to counsel her.  Frances confided that the greatest longing of her heart was to be certain she was a child of God.  To know that, she could gladly sustain the loss of even her father, brothers, and sisters.

Miss Cooke’s response was, “Then, Fanny, I think, I am sure, it will not be very long before your desire is granted, your hope fulfilled.  Why cannot you trust yourself to your Savior at once?  Supposing that now, at this moment, Christ were to come in the clouds of Heaven and take up His redeemed, could you not trust Him?  Would not His call, His promise, be enough for you?  Could you not commit your soul to Him, to your Savior Jesus?”

“I could, surely,” was Frances’ answer.  And with those words, she arose and retired to her room. She tells us what happened next:

I flung myself on my knees and strove to realize the sudden hope.  I was very happy at last.  I could commit my soul to Jesus.  I did not, and need not, fear His coming.  I could trust Him with my all for eternity.  It was so utterly new to have any bright thoughts about religion that I could hardly believe it could be so, that I really had gained such a step.  Then and there, I committed my soul to the Savior, I do not mean to say without any trembling or fear, but I did—and earth and Heaven seemed bright from that moment—I did trust the Lord Jesus.1

The next August she went away to school, but her studies were interrupted by an illness from which she was slow to recover.  Though Frances was intensely vivacious, she accepted the enforced idleness with patience and faith.  “I am sure it will be all right,” she wrote to a friend, “and if I receive good things at the hand of such a Father, shall I murmur at such a drawback, which is only to teach me a lesson I must learn?”

In November, 1852, Frances accompanied her father and his wife to Germany.  There the girl enrolled in a school where she keenly felt her responsibility as a Christian among 110 students.  She relates:  “I do not think there was one besides myself who cared for religion.  It was very bracing.  I felt I must try to walk worthy of my calling, for Christ’s sake, and it brought a new and very strong desire to bear witness for my Master, to adorn His doctrine and to win others for Him.”2

The next year the family returned to England, and Frances was judged ready for confirmation.  In the ceremony, the prayer, “Defend, O Lord, this Thy child with Thy heavenly grace, that she may continue Thine forever and daily increase in Thy Holy Spirit more and more, until she come into Thy everlasting kingdom,” was most solemnly impressed upon her mind.  She kept the anniversary of this sacred occasion as long as she lived, often spending the entire day in prayer and meditation.

Always an avid student, Frances acquired a knowledge of German while on the Continent.  Her father aided her in the study of Greek that she might better understand the New Testament.  One summer she spent much time poring over Hebrew.  While teaching her young nieces, she utilized spare moments in the learning of Italian verbs and spent some of her early morning hours concentrating on Latin.

As she approached young womanhood, Frances was characterized by a deeper thirst for God.  Her love of His Word was intensified, and she gave much time to the memorizing of the Scriptures.  The Gospels, Epistles, Revelation, and the Psalms were absorbed into her very being in this way; later in life she undertook to learn by heart the book of Isaiah and those of the Minor Prophets.

Her gift of verse composition enabled her to write in a most spontaneous way, although she felt that every line and stanza were given by God.  Frances shares with us how she received the  inspiration for her great consecration hymn, “Take My Life”:

I went for a little visit of five days.  There were ten persons in the house, some unconverted and long prayed for, some converted but not rejoicing Christians.  He gave me the prayer, “Lord, give me all in this house!”  And He just did!  Before I left the house, everyone had got a blessing.  The last night of my visit I was too happy to sleep and passed most of the night in praise and renewal of my consecration, and these little couplets formed themselves and chimed in my heart one after another, till they finished with, “Ever, only, ALL for Thee.”3

Her voice was considered worthy of training, with the result that at religious gatherings she often sang solos in a most effective manner.  Of this gift she wrote, “Literal singing for Jesus is to me, somehow, the most personal and direct commission I hold from my beloved Master.”

As the years passed, although Frances had no doubt of her acceptance with God, periods of intermittent spiritual darkness beset her way.  Later she defined the reason for this:

I had hoped that a kind of tableland had been reached in my journey, where I might walk awhile in the light, without the weary succession of rock and hollow, crag and morass, stumbling and striving, but I seem borne back into all the old difficulties of the way, with many sin-made aggravations.

I think the great root of all my trouble and alienation is that I do not now make an unreserved surrender of myself to God, and until this is done I shall know no peace.  I am sure of it.  I have so much to regret—a greater dread of the opinion of worldly friends, a loving of the world, and proportionate cooling in heavenly desire and love. . . . I want to make the most of my life and to do the best with it, but here I feel my desires and motives need much purifying.  For, even where all would sound fair enough in words, an element of self, of lurking pride, may be detected.  Oh, that He would indeed purify me and make me white at any cost!4

In the year 1873, the longings of her heart for a continuous enjoyment of the presence of God were realized.  From a friend Frances received a booklet entitled, “All for Jesus.”  It explained the deeper spiritual life for which she had been yearning, but which had seemed impossible of attainment.  She corresponded with the author, and a few words in answer were used to bring her to the fountain where the thirst of her soul was forever quenched.  The writer of the booklet emphasized “the power of Jesus to keep those who abide in Him from falling, and on the continually present power of His blood.”  Frances’ reaction was, “I see it all, and I have the blessing.”  Her sister writes:

The “sunless ravines” were now forever passed, and henceforth her peace and joy flowed onwards, deepening and widening under the teaching of God the Holy Ghost.  The blessing she had received had (to use her own words) “lifted her whole life into sunshine, of which all she had previously experienced was but as pale and passing April gleams, compared with the fullness of summer glory.”5

Several years later, she told about this experience in a letter to one of her sisters:

December 2, 1873, I first saw clearly the blessedness of true consecration.  I saw it as a flash of electric light, and what you see you can never unsee.  There must be full surrender before there can be full blessedness.  God admits you by the one into the other.  He Himself showed me all this most clearly. . . . First, I was shown that “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” And then it was made plain to me that He Who had thus cleansed me had power to keep me clean.  So I just utterly yielded myself to Him and utterly trusted Him to keep me.6

After this, her life was exceedingly blessed to others.  Living as she did on the highest plane of religious experience, its reality and power were felt wherever she went.  Once, when Frances entered a drawing-room meeting, someone present remarked that it seemed as though streams of vitality poured forth through her.

Fortunately we have many letters of hers written about this time which convey the scope of the work done in her heart as can be seen in the following extract from one such letter:

One of the intensest moments of my life was when I saw the force of that word “cleanseth.”  The utterly unexpected and altogether unimagined sense of its fulfillment to me, on simply believing it in its fullness, was just indescribable.  I expected nothing like it short of Heaven.

I am so thankful that, in the whole matter, there was as little human instrumentality as well could be, for certainly two sentences in letters from a total stranger were little.  I say only two sentences for nothing else seemed to make much difference to me; all the rest was, I am sure, God’s direct teaching.  And you know I had read no books and attended no meetings or conferences! . . .

I have waited many months before writing this, so it is no new and untested theory to me; in fact, experience came before theory and is more to me than any theory.  But understand me, it is “not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect; but I follow after. . . . I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”7

Later to another friend she wrote:

I don’t suppose I ever sent you “Such a Blessing.”. . . If “all” in 1 John 1:7 does not mean “all,” how much does it mean?  And if “cleanseth” only means “cleansed me when I said my prayers last night” what force is there in tenses?  And I know that such a blessing is to be had, and that life is a different thing then.  And I know that it is not perfection, nor perfectionism, because if it were, I should not need and desire and claim that wonderful perpetual present tense—“goes on cleansing”; I cannot do without the precious blood of Jesus one hour or one moment.

Besides the floodtide of religious poetry that flowed from her pen, she authored tracts and devotional books which inspired thousands the world over.  Kept for the Master’s Use, Royal Commandments, and Royal Bounty had tremendous publication and still are sending out streams of “living water.”

Conscientious in every part of her life and ever mindful of the Christian profession she sustained, it is no wonder that this spirit entered into the realm of finances.  She said she never spent even a sixpence without the feeling that it belonged to God.  Her dress betokened that of a Christian, neat but plain, showing the desire of the wearer not to attract attention either by carelessness or extravagance.

“The question of cost I see very strongly,” she commented, “and do not consider myself at liberty to spend on dress that which might be spared for God’s work.  But it costs no more to have a thing well and prettily made, and I should only feel justified in getting a costly dress if it would last proportionately longer.”8

She sustained severe disappointments at times.  The firm responsible for printing her books in America went into bankruptcy.  “I have not a fear or a doubt or a care or a shadow upon the sunshine of my heart,” she wrote, when no profit for her literary effort was forthcoming.  Nor was she despondent when fire destroyed many plates of her music and hymns.

God’s servant was not immune from recurring bouts of ill health, when for indefinite periods of time a change of scenery and complete rest were required.  These times of illness enabled her to feel for others in their hour of trial.  A letter to a friend reveals the depth of understanding she possessed:

I can hardly say I am sorry for you, dear friend, although you tell me of suffering and trial, and although I feel very much for you in it, because I am so sure the Master is leading you by the right way, and only means it to issue in all the more blessing.  What mistakes we should make if we had the choosing, and marked out nice smooth paths for our friends!

It has struck me too, very much lately, that the Lord’s most used and blessed workers are almost always weighted in some way or other.  I don’t know one who, to our limited view, is not working under weights and hindrances of some sort, contrasting with mere professors who seem so much more favorably placed for what they don’t do.

I am so very glad that He did not answer prayer for my recovery all those eight months of illness; why, I should have missed all sorts of blessing and precious teaching if He had!  But when one feels that He Himself gives “the prayer of faith,” then I would pray it “nothing doubting.”9

Ever thirsting for more, ever longing to know more of the ocean of God’s fullness—that was Miss Havergal’s experience.  A year or more before her death, she wrote expressing this hunger in a letter to a friend:

“Shadowless communion,”—there you have touched a chord indeed!  I too have tasted it, but have not yet had the full, continual draughts which I believe may be ours, and which I neither can nor will rest short of!  You will intensely interest me, and perhaps help me both for myself and for possible future writing for others, if you will tell me anything that pen can convey as to your own tasting of the “shadowless communion.”  Tell me what you see to be had, beyond what you yet have.

The end of her beautiful life came in the spring of 1879.  She suffered a chill at a temperance meeting for young men and boys, and within several days it became evident she was very ill.  When she herself realized that she probably would not recover, no dread or fear of the passage “through the valley of the shadow of death” disturbed the peace of her soul.  “Splendid to be so near the gates of Heaven!” she exclaimed.  To the watchers at her bedside, the radiance of the Holy City seemed to cast its gleams over her countenance as she, who had so gladdened earth with her songs, joined the angelic choirs above.