[Footnote 1:  Quoted in The Sisters.  Charles Bullock, B.D., p. 100.]

The ministry of song of F.R.  Havergal will chiefly be remembered, however, by the goodly heritage of poetry which she has left to the Church of Christ, and in which she being dead yet speaketh.  Here it is that her great influence is still felt.  She had the happy gift of expressing the deep breathings of the consecrated soul in whole-hearted loyalty to the blessed Master.  She strove to regard the Lord Jesus as a real living and personal Friend.  She longed to be entirely yielded up to His service, and she put the thoughts of her heart, which had been warmed by the indwelling Spirit, in real and genuine expressions of love to and praise of her Master.

She began writing verses when she was only seven years of age.

In 1860 her poetry was so much appreciated that she received applications from the editors of various religions magazines to supply poetical contributions.  In 1803 she received her first cheque of L10 17s. 6d.  This she sent to her father:  L10 for anything he liked to employ it on, 10s. for the Scripture Readers’ collection, and 7s. 6d. for any similar emergency.

Her hymn “I gave my life for thee” first appeared in Good Words.  It was written in Germany in 1858.  She had come in weary and sat down opposite a picture with this motto.  At once the lines flashed upon her and she wrote them in pencil on a scrap of paper.  Reading them over, they did not satisfy her.  She tossed them into the fire, but they fell out untouched.  Showing them some months after to her father, he encouraged her to preserve them, and wrote the tune “Baca” especially for them.

The origin of the well-known hymn, ‘Take my Life,’ she thus describes—­“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, every one 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 own consecration, and these little couplets formed themselves, and chimed in my heart one after another, till they finished with ’Ever, ONLY, ALL, for Thee.’”

Some six months before she died she wrote thus about this hymn, “I had a great time early this morning, renewing the never-regretted consecration.  I seemed led to run over the ‘Take my Life,’ and could bless Him verse by verse for having led me on to much more definite consecration than even when I wrote it—­voice, gold, intellect, etc.  But the eleventh couplet—­”

     ’Take my love—­my Lord, I pour
      At Thy feet its treasure store’—­