by David L. Chalkley (Editor), Glen T. Wegge (Editor), Samuel Gillespie Prout (Author)
Never Say Die is a clear, compassionate presentation to lost sinners, showing them their great need and the provision of God in Christ. Samuel Gillespie Prout (1822-1911) was a pastor in Newport, Wales, and he wrote this for old friends whom he had known years earlier. His friend, Frances Ridley Havergal, read and greatly valued one of the early copies printed for private circulation, and she very much wanted this published for many to have and read. After Prout was apparently too occupied to prepare it for publication, she edited it for him, and found a publisher to bring it out into the world. F.R.H. wrote this in a letter to Prout: "Believe me, there is real spiritual power in what you have written; as I glanced over your specimen page I felt inclined to envy you, -it throbs with life and warm reality. Oh, may you have the joy of bringing the living water to thousands by it " In a published advertisement about Never Say Die, this was quoted from her: "A splendid little book for evangelistic use. It says just the very things one wants to say or get said to all the dark and weary outsiders.There is a curious freshness and force throughout, and the 'free salvation' and the 'marvellous love' are told out with enviable power. I wish it could be put into the hands of every man and lad in the kingdom, and read at all the mothers' meetings too. I am sure Christian workers only need to know it, to adopt it as one of their best tools."-Frances Ridley Haverga
Author Biography
Frances Ridley Havergal's formal education ended when she was seventeen, with one term at a young women's school in Dusseldorf, Germany, yet she was a true scholar all her life. Fluent in German and French and nearly so in Italian, she read and loved the Reformers in Latin, German, and French. Knowledge was never an end in itself, only a means to know better her Lord and Saviour and to help to bring others to know Him. The Bible was her only Book, and she studied deeply the Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture, memorized nearly all the New Testament and large portions of the Old Testament, and loved the Author with all her being. Frances was brought to a saving knowledge of Christ when she was fourteen, and the rest of her life was consecrated to her Savior, the Lord Jesus. Keenly aware of her own sinfulness and inability, her sole desire was to please and glorify Him alone. Very finely gifted, she was truly diligent with her gifts: her poetry is among the finest Christian verse in the English language, after George Herbert; her prose works are deeply beneficial; a musician to the core, she left behind important compositions. Like her works, her life richly touched the ones near her and countless many who met or heard her. The Lord Jesus Christ was her alone, only beauty, and she glowed Him and His truth. These books are taken from the newly prepared edition of The Complete Works of Frances Ridley Havergal. Never wanting attention to herself, Frances' desire of her heart was for herself and for others to know her King, the Lord Jesus Christ. Her works are a gold-mine of help and enrichment. As her sister Maria, wrote, Knowing her intense desire that Christ should be magnified, whether by her life or in her death, may it be to His glory that in these pages she, being dead, "Yet speaketh !" David L. Chalkley and Glen T. Wegge, editors