For many of us, one of the first prayers we learned as little children was after the sun went down, as we knelt with our parents beside our bed, asking the Lord to grant us sleep as He watched over us through the night. We prayed …
Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.
How wonderful to know that while troubles swirl around us, we can trust the Lord to keep us secure under His powerful, watchful care.
In Psalm 4, we call on the Lord to come to our aid when we are in distress. “Be gracious to me and hear my prayer” (vs. 1). “Lift up the light of Your face upon us, O LORD!” (vs. 6). And in the awareness of all the hostile challenges that are arrayed against us, we rest in the confidence that He will care for us as we rest peacefully, trusting in His fatherly care and goodness. “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety” (vs. 8).
One of the most wonderful personal devotional aids for us today is the marvelous collection of Puritan prayers and devotions, “The Valley of Vision,” first published in 1975 by The Banner of Truth Trust in Edinburgh. Many of us have used this collection as part of our personal or family daily devotions with the Lord. The title comes from the first of the prayers, which begins “Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.” And near the end we read “Lord, in the daytime stars can best be seen from the deepest wells, and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine.”
As we are considering the blessing of sleep, when we rest through the night, “The Valley of Vision” provides this beautiful prayer for the evening.
BLESSED CREATOR,
Thou hast promised thy beloved sleep;
“Sleep,” pp. 298-299 from “The Valley of Vision”. © 1975 by The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, Scotland. Edited by Arthur Bennet. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Give me restoring rest needful for tomorrow’s toil;
If dreams be mine,
let them not be tinged with evil.
Let thy Spirit make my time of repose
a blessed temple of his holy presence.
May my frequent lying down make me familiar with death,
the bed I approach remind me of the grave,
the eyes I now close picture to me their final closing.
Keep me always ready, waiting for admittance to thy presence.
Weaken my attachment to earthly things.
May I hold life loosely in my hand,
knowing that I receive it on condition of its surrender;
As pain and suffering betoken transitory health,
may I not shrink from a death that introduces me
to the freshness of eternal youth.
I retire this night in full assurance of one day awaking with thee.
All glory for this precious hope,
for the gospel of grace,
for thine unspeakable gift of Jesus,
for the fellowship of the Trinity.
Withhold not thy mercies in the night season;
thy hand never wearies,
thy power needs no repose,
thine eye never sleeps.
Help me when I helpless lie,
when my conscience accuses me of sin,
when my mind is harassed by foreboding thoughts,
when my eyes are held awake by personal anxieties.
Show thyself to me as the God of all grace, love and power;
thou hast a balm for every wound,
a solace for all anguish,
a remedy for every pain,
a peace for all disquietude.
Permit me to commit myself to thee awake or asleep.
Every hymnal will have a section of hymns for the evening. Many of us learned these as part of our Lord’s Day evening worship services in church, something that has tragically become all too rare in our time. One of the most lyrical that reflects the prayer of Psalm 4 is “God, That Madest Earth and Heaven,” which is actually a compilation of stanzas from different authors, Reginal Heber, Frederick Lucian Hosmer, Richard Whately, and William Mercer.
Reginald Heber (1783–1826), a bishop of Calcutta for the Anglican Church (1823-1826), is the author of the first stanza, the words with which we identify the hymn, “God, That Madest Earth and Heaven.” There is an account that Bishop Heber wrote the first stanza after hearing a harp play the tune AR HYD Y NOS in a host’s home in Wales. The tune name is Welsh and translates to “the livelong night.” Heber’s contributions to hymnody include hymns for each of the liturgical seasons of the church year, including “Holy, Holy Holy” and “Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning.” After 16 years as a country parson in England, Heber had a very effective ministry in India until he died from heatstroke at the young age of only 42, having accomplished much in the three brief years he served there. He had just preached in the extreme heat, and died almost immediately after plunging into a bath of cool water in his bungalow for relief. On the evening he died, Bishop Heber confirmed 42 souls in Trichinopoly, India.
Frederick Lucian Hosmer (1840 – 1929) is the author of the stanza that begins “When the constant sun, returning.” He was an American Unitarian minister who served congregations in Massachusetts, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, and California, and who wrote many significant hymns. The Unitarian Universalist hymnbook, “Singing the Living Tradition,” contains eight of his hymns. Born in Framingham, Massachusetts, Hosmer graduated from Harvard College in 1862 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1869. In his earlier years he was known as a beloved pastor and an acceptable preacher, his most successful pastorate being that in Cleveland, where he built up a strong and influential church.
On October 26, 1869, he was ordained minister of the First Congregational Church (Unitarian) of Northborough, Massachusetts, where he remained for three years. In subsequent pastorates, he led congregations to embrace what was to become known as “The Social Gospel,” a liberal substitute for the biblical true gospel. It was not until he approached middle life that he began to write hymns.
Hosmer often wrote hymns for special occasions, the most notable instance being his great hymn “O Prophet Souls of All the Years,” written for the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893, to capture the vision and spirit of that watershed meeting. He never married.
Yet another stanza, the one that begins with the words “Guard us waking, guard us sleeping,” was written by Richard Whately (1787-1863) an English academic, rhetorician, logician, philosopher, economist, and theologian who also served as a reforming Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin. He was a leading voice in the liberal broad church movement, a prolific and combative author over a wide range of topics, regarded as quite a flamboyant character. He was born in London and was educated at Oxford. After his marriage, he found employment in a succession of teaching positions as tutor and professor.
Whately’s appointment as Archbishop to the see of Dublin came as a political surprise. In Ireland, his bluntness and his lack of a conciliatory manner caused opposition from his own clergy, and from the beginning he gave offence by supporting state endowment of the Catholic clergy. During the famine years of 1846 and 1847 this Archbishop and his family tried to alleviate the miseries of the people. From 1856 onwards symptoms of decline began to manifest themselves in a paralysis of Whately’s left side. Still he continued his public duties. There is a monument dedicated to him in the west aisle of the south transept in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In the summer of 1863 he was seriously afflicted by an ulcer in the leg, and after several months of acute suffering he died on October 8, 1863. He had two daughters, who also wrote hymns.
Two additional stanzas were written by William Mercer (1811-1873), the stanzas beginning with the words “And when morn again shall call us” and “Holy Father, throned in heaven.” Born at Barnard Castle, Durham and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was appointed Incumbent of St. George’s, Sheffield. His principal work was a psalter and hymn collection of 400 metrical compositions first published in 1854, and enlarged in following years. For many years, this was the most-widely used of all the hymnals in the Church of England. It was distinct in his having included a large number of Wesleyan hymns and also translations from German chorales, including some from Moravian hymnbooks. His own hymn compositions were not very successful.
In stanza 1, by Heber, we ask God to watch over us as we sleep through the night.
God, that madest earth and heaven, Darkness and light,
Who the day for toil hast given, For rest the night,
May Thine angel guards defend us, Slumber sweet Thy mercy send us,
Holy dreams and hopes attend us, This live-long night.
In stanza 2, by Hosmer, we ask God to watch over us as we labor through the day.
When the constant sun returning Unseals our eyes,
May we, born anew like morning, To labor rise;
Gird us for the tasks that call us, Let not ease and self enthrall us,
Strong though Thee whate’er befalls is, O God most wise.
In stanza 3, by Whately, we ask God to be with us until the time of our death.
Guard us waking, guard us sleeping, And when we die,
May we in Thy mighty keeping All peaceful lie;
When the last dread call awake us, Do not Thou, our God, forsake us,
But to reign in glory take us, With Thee on high.
In stanza 4, by Mercer, we ask God for His smile to be with us as we resist the power of evil.
And when morn again shall call us, To run life’s way,
May we still whate’er befall us, Thy will obey,
From the power of evil hide us, In the narrow pathway guide us,
Nor Thy smile be e’er denied us All through the day.
In stanza 5, by Mercer, we ask God to receive our praise until “we lay our crowns before Thee.”
Holy Father, throned in heaven, All holy Son,
Holy Spirit, freely given, Blessed Three in One:
Grant us grace, we now implore Thee, Till we lay our crowns before Thee,
And in worthier strains adore Thee, While ages run.
The tune (AR HYD Y NOS, or “All Through the Night”) is a traditional Welsh melody. It was included in the 1784 “Musical Relicks of the Welsh Bards” compiled by Edward Jones (1752-1824). The harmonization is attributed to Luther Orlando Emerson, who was born on August 3, 1820, at Parsonfield, Maine. Attending the Parsonfield Seminary and Effingham Academy, he originally planned to be a physician and entered Dracut Academy, but his love for music led him to follow a career as a musician, and he studied under a popular teacher of the time, Isaac Baker Woodbury. After learning voice, piano, and organ, he moved to Salem, Massachusetts, began teaching, and took charge of his first choir at the salary of $100 a year. By 1853, he felt confident enough of his ability to show his music to the public and published the Romberg Collection. After eight years in Salem, he moved to Boston, and accepted the position of music director at the Bulfinch Street Church. In 1857, he became associated with the publishing firm of Oliver Ditson Company in Boston. Later, Findlay College in Ohio awarded him the Doctor of Music degree. His harmonization of the Welsh folk air is dated 1906 and was possibly first published that year in “The English Hymnal,” edited by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). Emerson died at Hyde Park, Massachusetts, on September 29, 1915.
Reginal Heber was inspired by this AR HYD Y NOS tune to write his hymn “God that Madest Earth and Heaven.” The story behind the hymn was relayed by D. R. Thomas, vicar of Meifod, in an 1881 article relating to Heber and his close friend and fellow poet, Robert Southey (1774–1843). He wrote that it was during this 1820 visit that Heber, after hearing the old Welsh air of AR HYD Y NOS played upon the harp, and while the tune was still ringing in his ears, composed to its music his well-known “Evening Hymn.” Curiously, Heber’s hymn, although written for (or inspired by) AR HYD Y NOS, was almost never printed with the Welsh tune in the 19th century. Heber’s hymn did appear with AR HYD Y NOS in the second edition of J. Freeman Young’s 1860 “Hymns for Children,”but this marked a rare (and possibly sole) appearance before 1900.
Here you can hear the two most frequently sung stanzas.