She was 42 and dying when she asked a friend to read her own hymn back to her. Her last coherent words were confirmation that what she had written was true.

Frances Ridley Havergal — who wrote “Take My Life and Let It Be” overnight in an overflow of joy after watching five friends commit their lives to Christ — died on June 3, 1879, at the age of 42. She had been in declining health for years and was felled finally by peritonitis, an abdominal condition that progressed rapidly through her final weeks.

She faced her dying with a consistency those around her found remarkable. She had written about consecration and surrender for her entire adult life. The question her death answered, silently and practically, was whether she had meant it.

In her final hours, while still conscious, she asked a friend to read to her from a hymn she had written called “Like a River Glorious” — a hymn about the peace of those who trust in God fully, whose souls rest in a peace that deepens rather than diminishes, that is “stayed upon Jehovah” and therefore unmovable:

“Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace, over all victorious in its bright increase. Perfect, yet it floweth fuller every day. Perfect, yet it groweth deeper all the way.”

When the friend finished reading the final line — “Perfect, yet it floweth fuller every day” — Havergal opened her eyes. She said, clearly enough to be heard and recorded: “Just that. That is what Jesus is to me.”

Then she lost consciousness and did not regain it.

She had written about a peace that surpassed understanding. At the boundary of everything, she confirmed it had not been poetry.

The friend who read the hymn to her was left holding the book.

“And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
~ Philippians 4:7