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Frances Ridley Havergal’s Theology of Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Andrew Atherstone
Andrew Atherstone*
Affiliation:
Wycliffe Hall, Oxford
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Extract

Historians of the nineteenth-century Keswick holiness movement have long observed, though seldom analysed, its theological appropriation of the natural world. With annual conventions held from 1875 in the Lake District, home territory of Wordsworth and Southey, the movement’s love of nature was one of its most obvious ‘Romantic afFinities’ and marked it out from other streams of contemporary Evangelicalism, as David Bebbington has recendy shown. Yet much of the early theological inspiration behind the Keswick Convention was drawn not from the Lake Poets, but from the devotional writings of Victorian England’s best-known evangelical poet, Frances Ridley Havergal. The Keswick emphases upon absolute surrender to God and ‘entire consecration’ in his service, with a deep christocentric piety and a passion for spiritual transformation, pervade her teaching. Although Havergal’s brief career lasted only two decades, being cut short by her untimely death in June 1879 at the age of 42, her output was prodigious. Alongside indefatigable letter-writing and the production of numerous evangelistic booklets, she published several collections of poetry and hymnody in a short space of time, notably The Ministry of Song (1869), Under the Surface (1874), Loyal Responses (1878) and, posthumously, Under His Shadow (1879). Her popular hymns, such as ‘Take My Life’ and ‘Like a River Glorious’, became synonymous with Keswick spirituality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 46: God’s Bounty? The Churches and the Natural World , 2010 , pp. 319 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2010

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References

1 See esp. Bebbington, David, Holiness in Nineteenth-Century England (Carlisle, 2000), 73—90 Google Scholar (quotation at 79); idem, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London, 1989), 151–80 Google Scholar; Price, Charles and Randall, Ian, Transforming Keswick (Carlisle, 2000)Google Scholar; Dieter, M. E., The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century, 2nd edn (Lanham, MD, 1996).Google Scholar

2 Havergal, Maria V. G., Memorials of Frances Ridley Havergal (London, 1880), 116.Google Scholar

3 Grierson, Janet, Frances Ridley Havergal: Worcestershire Hymnwriter (Bromsgrove, 1979), 114.Google Scholar

4 Maria Havergal, Memorials, 15.

5 The Poems of William Cowper, 2: 1782—1785, ed. Baird, John D. and Ryskamp, Charles (Oxford, 1995), 230.Google Scholar

6 Maria Havergal, Memorials, 15.

7 Ibid. 16–17.

8 ‘A Seeing Heart’ (1872), in The Poetical Works of Frances Ridley Havergal, 2 vols (London, 1884), 2: 205.Google Scholar

9 Havergal to J. Miriam Crane, 30 June 1871, in Havergal, F. R., Swiss Letters and Alpine Poems, ed. Crane, J. Miriam (London, 1882), 128.Google Scholar

10 On Pennefather, see, in this volume, Smith, Mark, ‘The Mountain and the Flower: The Power and Potential of Nature in the World of Victorian Evangelicalism’, 307–18.Google Scholar

11 F. R. Havergal to Elizabeth Clay, 16 July 1872 (Maria Havergal, Memorials, 117).

12 Worcester, Worcestershire Record Office, Havergal MSS, Swiss Journal, 10 June 1869.

13 Ibid., 8 July 1869.

14 ‘Fragments’ (1872; Poetical Works, 1: 199).

15 Havergal to Charlotte Havergal, 2 October 1874 (Swiss Letters, ed. Crane, 302).

16 Havergal to Crane, 20 July 1871 (ibid. 169).

17 ‘New Year’s Wishes’ (1858; Poetical Works, 1: 129).

18 ‘Easter Echoes’ (1876; ibid. 1: 399).

19 ‘The Col de Balm’ (1869; ibid. 2: 138).

20 F. R. Havergal,’Lucerne’, The Dayspring (June 1874), 62.

21 Swiss Journal, 3 July 1869.

22 Ibid., 12 June 1869.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid., 15 June 1869.

25 Ibid., 10 July 1869.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 ‘Col de Balm’ (Poetical Works, 2: 138–39).

30 Swiss Journal, 15 July 1869.

31 Havergal, F. R., ‘Holiday Work’, Woman’s Work in the Great Harvest Field 1 (1872), 184–85 Google Scholar. For a similar description, see Havergal to Crane, 8 July 1871 (Swiss Letters, ed. Crane, 143).

32 Havergal to Crane, 13 July 1871 (Swiss Letters, ed. Crane, 152, 155).

33 Maria Havergal, Memorials, 28–29.

34 Havergal, F. R., The Four Happy Days (London, 1874), 23.Google Scholar

35 ‘Colossians 3: 2’ (1854; Poetical Works, 1: 167–69).

36 ‘Earth’s Shadow’ (1855; ibid. 1: 171).

37 ‘On the Death of Captain Allen Gardiner’ (1852; ibid. 1: 183).

38 Swiss Journal, 7 June 1869.

39 ‘Zenith’ (1877; Poetical Works, 2: 310–11, 328).

40 ‘The Splendour of God’s Will’ (1874; ibid. 2: 360–64).

41 ‘Seeing Heart’ (ibid. 2: 205–07).

42 ‘Two Points of View’ (1855; ibid. 1: 194).

43 ‘July on the Mountains’ (1872; ibid. 2: 207–208).

44 ‘Peace’ (1856; ibid. 1: 196–98).

45 Swiss Journal, 14 June 1869.

46 ‘The Voice of Many Waters’ (1878; Poetical Works, 2: 381–87).Google Scholar

47 Havergal to Caroline Havergal, 3 June 1873 (Swiss Letters, ed. Crane, 224).

48 ‘The Two Paths’ (1878; Poetical Works, 2: 365–66).

49 Swiss Journal, 7 July 1869.

50 Grierson, Havergal, 152.

51 ‘The Thoughts of God’ (1874; Poetical Works, 2: 332).Google Scholar

52 ‘Our Red-Letter Days’ (1877; ibid. 1: 423–24).

53 Maria Havergal, Memorials, 228.

54 Havergal, F. R., ‘Our Swiss Guide’, Sunday Magazine 4 (1874–75), 47–51.Google Scholar

55 Swiss Letters, ed. Crane, 318.

56 Havergal,’Swiss Guide’, 47, 50.