'Take My Life, and Let It Be' (1874) by Frances Ridley Havergal is the most systematically comprehensive hymn of consecration in the English language. Written in a single night following Havergal's experience of entire surrender to God, it dedicates every faculty and dimension of human life to divine service - moving through hands, feet, voice, lips, silver, gold, intellect, will, and heart in a catalogue that is at once personal testimony and doctrinal map of what total consecration actually means.
The Night of February 4, 1874
Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-1879) had been a committed Christian since childhood but struggled for years with the assurance of entire consecration - the Holiness movement's term for the second crisis of grace, in which the believer yields fully to the Holy Spirit's control. On the evening of 4 February 1874, she was staying at a house party of ten people in Areley House in Worcestershire. She wrote: 'I was having five days with dear friends; but I felt I was not as happy as I might be. I prayed earnestly that God would take possession of me altogether... God there answered my prayer. I was so filled with joy that I could not sleep, and passed most of the night in praise and thanksgiving.' She wrote the couplets of 'Take My Life' during that night.
The account is important for understanding the hymn: it is not a prayer requesting consecration but a record of consecration already experienced, expressed in the present tense ('I now give'). Each couplet is a report of surrender rather than a request for it.
Biblical Foundation
Romans 12:1 (KJV): 'I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.' Paul's appeal is the hymn's theological framework: the offering of the entire self - not specific acts of service, but the self as a living sacrifice. Havergal's systematically comprehensive couplets are the hymn equivalent of taking Paul's 'bodies' (the whole embodied person) and unpacking what its consecration actually requires in practice.
Psalm 31:5 (KJV): 'Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O LORD God of truth.' Christ's final words on the cross (Luke 23:46) are themselves a quotation of this Psalm - the ultimate act of self-committal to God. Havergal's hymn is an invitation to make the same committal in daily living.
Luke 9:23 - 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily' - provides the daily, ongoing character of the consecration: not a once-for-all transaction but a continuous choosing.
The Systematic Couplets
The hymn's genius is its comprehensiveness. Each couplet takes a different faculty or dimension of life and consecrates it:
'Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of thy love.' - physical action. 'Take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for thee.' - movement and direction. 'Take my voice, and let me sing always, only, for my King.' - public speech. 'Take my lips, and let them be filled with messages from thee.' - communication. 'Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold.' - financial resources. 'Take my intellect, and use every power as thou shalt choose.' - mental capacity. 'Take my will, and make it thine; it shall be no longer mine.' - the most intimate faculty, the will itself. 'Take my heart, it is thine own; it shall be thy royal throne.' - the center of the person.
The final couplet - 'Take my love; my Lord, I pour at thy feet its treasure-store' - returns to affection, completing the circle: consecration begins with the outer (hands, feet) and moves inward until even the love that motivates all the rest is offered back to its source.
Keswick Movement Context
The Keswick Convention (founded 1875, one year after this hymn) adopted 'Take My Life' as its defining text. The movement's emphasis on practical, daily consecration - not ecstatic experience but the daily yielding of specific faculties to the Holy Spirit - was perfectly expressed in Havergal's couplets. The hymn became the standard for what Keswick meant by the 'surrendered life.'
Havergal herself practiced what she preached. On hearing this hymn sung, she gave away her jewelry - a set of fifty pieces - to the Church Missionary Society, keeping only a locket given by a deceased parent and a brooch given by a dying friend. 'I don't think I need to wear any other,' she wrote.
Musical Settings
Two tunes are primarily used: 'Hendon' (H.A. César Malan) in British hymnbooks, and 'Consecration' (Mozart, adapted) in some American traditions. Both are gentle, flowing melodies suited to the text's intimate character.
Legacy
The hymn appears in virtually every major Protestant hymnbook and is used at services of consecration, ordination, missionary commissioning, and personal renewal across evangelical, Anglican, and Holiness traditions worldwide. Its comprehensiveness - the systematic coverage of every human faculty - makes it useful for exactly the purpose Havergal wrote it: not as a general expression of spiritual intent, but as a specific, actionable inventory of the surrendered life.