Grant, Lord, when I from death shall wake,
I may of endless life partake.
It is said that after Bishop Ken had written this hymn, he sang it to his own accompaniment on the lute every morning as a part of his private devotion. Although he wrote many other hymns, only this one and his evening hymn have survived. The two hymns were published in a devotional book prepared for the students of Winchester College. In this work Bishop Ken urged the students to sing the hymns devoutly in their rooms every morning and evening.
The historian Macaulay paid Ken a beautiful tribute when he said that he came as near to the ideal of Christian perfection “as human weakness permits.”
It was during the life-time of Bishop Ken that Joseph Addison, the famous essayist, was publishing the “Spectator.” Addison was not only the leading literary light of his time, but a devout Christian as well. From time to time he appended a poem to the charming essays which appeared in the “Spectator,” and it is from this source that we have received five hymns of rare beauty. They are the so-called “Creation” hymn, “The spacious firmament on high,” which Haydn included in his celebrated oratorio; the Traveler’s hymn, beginning with the line, “How are Thy servants blest, O Lord”; and three other hymns, almost equally well-known: “The Lord my pasture shall prepare,” “When rising from the bed of death,” and “When all Thy mercies, O my God.” The latter contains one of the most striking expressions in all the realm of hymnody:
Through all eternity to Thee
A joyful song I’ll raise:
But oh, eternity’s too short
To utter all Thy praise!
In the essay introducing this hymn, Addison writes: “If gratitude is due from man to man, how much more from man to his Maker. The Supreme Being does not only confer upon us those bounties which proceed immediately from His hand, but even those benefits which are conveyed to us by others. Any blessing which we enjoy, by what means soever derived, is the gift of Him who is the great Author of Good and the Father of Mercies.”