One of the sweet traditions that has all but disappeared in the last twenty years in many of our churches is the singing of morning and evening hymns. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you probably worship in a little more contemporary church with no Sunday night service.
This is not a doctrinal issue or a matter of salvation, but it feels a little like it must have felt to give up eating food you grew in your own garden, or playing checkers with your friends at the courthouse, or watching Gunsmoke every Sunday night after church. Some traditions were just sweet.
Here are some of my favorite morning hymns:
- Early My God Without Delay I Haste To See Thy Face
- In the Hush of Early Morning
- Again the Lord of Light and Life Awakes the Kindling Ray
- Awake and Sing the Song of Moses and the Lamb
- Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, Early in the Morning Our Songs Shall Rise to Thee
Of course, these specifically morning hymns blend with the great songs of praise that were opening calls to worship, mostly for morning worship:
- O Worship the King
- Come Thou Almighty King
- Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
- All Creatures of Our God and King
- Come Ye That Love the Lord
- All Things Praise Thee (also, For The Beauty of the Earth)
- Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow
But nothing compares to evening hymns, the ones we not only sang at church but at retreats—and summer camp. Every night at camp we would go to a different spot after dark, look up at the stars that none of us city kids could ever see, and sing one of these songs
- Abide With Me Fast Falls the Eventide
- Now the Day is Over (great tenor and bass parts)
- Softly Now the Light of Day
- Be With Me, Lord
- Savior, Breathe An Evening Blessing – my very favorite!
James Edmeston wrote this last hymn sometime around 1820. There is a story told that during the Boxer Rebellion in China between 1898 and 1901, which was an uprising to root out imperialism and Christianity and when many thousands of Chinese Christians and foreign missionaries had been massacred, this hymn was sung as missionaries huddled together at night, worshipping God, but wondering if they would be alive in the morning.
Threatened with imminent death, the last verse must have taken great courage and faith to sing:
Should swift death this night o’er take us and our couch become our tomb . . . .
Here are all the lyrics:
Savior, breathe an evening blessing
Ere repose our spirits seal;
Sin and want we come confessing:
Thou canst save, and Thou canst heal.
Though destruction walk around us,
Though the arrow past us fly,
Angel guards from Thee surround us;
We are safe if Thou art nigh.
Though the night be dark and dreary,
Darkness cannot hide from Thee;
Thou art He who, never weary,
Watchest where Thy people be.
Should swift death this night o’ertake us,
And our couch become our tomb,
May the morn in heaven awake us,
Clad in light and deathless bloom
Of course, morning and evening hymns can still be sung suggesting symbolically the beginning and ending of life, so even without Sunday night services, I hope modern writers will draw on two of God’s most beautiful metaphors.
Mark's Blog 
Greetings from Wordwise Hymns. Your comments about the general loss of “evening hymns” with our congregations is right on. In the case of the church my wife and I attend, we have no evening service, and it does seem strange to sing about the close of day at noon! (Though as you point out, we can think in terms of a metaphorical use of day’s ending.)
Your blog caught my eye because I posted an article on “Saviour, Breathe an Evening Blessing” this morning. Glad to hear it’s a favourite.
Thanks Mark! I love the “dead white guy” evening hymns as well. I miss evening services and will never miss an appropriate opportunity to sing these great hymns. Some that I love – O Savior Bless Us Ere We Go, Savior Again To Thy Dear Name We Raise… And as Molly pointed out The Day Thou Gavest Lord is Ended (for the same reason). We have noticed that with many of these hymns we all die in the last verse which is important for us to acknowledge and place our reliance on the almighty.
Great post, Mark, but you left out two of my favorites: Day is Dying in the West and The Day Thou Gavest Lord is Ended. I love the verse that says, “The sun that bids us rest is waking brethren neath the western sky . . . The image of the church around the world is dear to me.
I love those songs too! I don’t know how I missed them. Thanks for mentioning them.
Hi!
Great post! Although I have almost never preached on the right way to worship, I have to admit that there is something in contemporary hymns that bores me to death. One writer (I forget who) pointed out the egotistical nature of modern hymns: “I will praise…”; “I love the Lord…” etc. That, at times, is a legitimate concern, but a bigger concern is for me is the lack of poetry, Scripture, or beauty in them. The one exception may be some of the Taize hymns used by Catholics and Evangelicals who are interested in that movement…
I love the moving lyrics of songs like “In the Garden”, “Morning Has Broken,” or “This is My Father’s World.” For a capella music, I think old monastic songs (provided the content is appropriate and not directed to Mary) to be very uplifting and spiritual. Perhaps it’s personal on my part, but I just don’t feel anything when singing modern songs, and sometimes even late 19th or early 20th Century songs irritate me when it seems we are more concerned with four part harmony than with meaning.
I think the best hymns use Scripture or tell stories about our faith. I didn’t grow up with your tradition of morning/evening hymns, but it sounds like a very beautiful tradition! Thanks for posting this!