“All this day Thy hand has led me,
And I thank Thee for Thy care;
Thou hast clothed me, warmed and fed me;
Listen to my evening prayer.
“Let my sins be all forgiven;
Bless the friends I love so well;
Take me when I die to heaven,
Happy there with Thee to dwell.”
Silence immediately prevailed. Hearts which were unmoved by the confusion of the earlier noises were touched by the song of the child. Their spirits became responsive, for a little child had led them in a song which was both a prayer of thanksgiving and reverent petition. Mary Lundie Duncan, who was the daughter of one minister and the wife of another, wrote this hymn, as she did others, for her own children. “In every word it breathes the childlike spirit.” Dr. James Moffatt, speaking perhaps more for his native country than for America (though the hymn is found in the section for children in some of our American hymnals), said that this is “the first evening prayer that thousands of little children learn.”