The Depths of "Now the Day Is Over"
The hymn that begins “Now the day is over” is a favorite for many of us, although you are not likely to hear it in a morning service at church. I think I have sung it at Evensong a hundred times, but I was fortunate to spend a decade of my life at a church that had choral evensong many times each week. It’s in the Hymnal 1982 at #42. But if you don’t have that book you might make the acquaintance of hymnody.org, a website that has it and many other hymnals. Just search for the first line. Or go to YouTube and search for it sung to the tune Merrial.
The author, Sabine Baring-Gould (1834–1924), was a priest of the Church of England. His original version had eight stanzas. The Hymnal 1982 has six (some other hymnals have fewer).
This deceptively simple hymn looks like a child’s prayer. Its words are simple and its stanzas brief, yet underneath them lie profundities.
The first three stanzas:
(1) Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh, / shadows of the evening steal across the sky.
(2) Jesus, give the weary calm and sweet repose; / with thy tenderest blessing may our eyelids close.
(3) Grant to little children visions bright of thee; / guard the sailors tossing on the deep, blue sea.
About the child-like character, note the words from the second stanza: “Jesus . . . with thy tenderest blessing may our eyelids close.” The third stanza then begins, “Grant to little children visions bright of thee.” Yet from the start the calm childhood world is confronted with dark forces creeping through the night: “shadows of the evening steal across the sky.” “Shadows” become things that act in their own right, and their manner of acting is to “steal,” which is to say to creep or encroach upon.
Piled upon these shadowy forces is danger. Sailors “tossing on the deep, blue sea” need to be guarded. The singer herself needs protection through the night, a night which has “watches,” hours in which someone must stay awake to ward off danger. Thus the fourth and fifth stanzas:
(4) Comfort every sufferer watching late in pain; / those who plan some evil from their sin restrain.
(5) Through the long night watches may thine angels spread / their white wings above me, watching round my bed.
The fifth stanza mixes the purity of a child, calling for angels to spread their white wings over her, with the realism of the need for watches, the need for wings of protection.
And there is deep realism about sin. Sin is real and there are people who plan to commit it, to do evil—all of which is packed into a single line, the second half of the fourth stanza: “Those who plan some evil, from their sin restrain.” People do plan to do evil deeds, to commit sin in the night: the hymn prays that God “restrain” them “from their sin.” As we dig further into the meaning of this hymn, we might ask if there are particular evils that characterize sin in the night.
Consider again the whole hymn from its opening to its final, sixth stanza.
(6) When the morning wakens, then may I arise / pure, and fresh, and sinless in thy holy eyes.
The first stanza sets the scene: The day is over. Night is drawing nigh. There are shadows stealing across the sky. The final stanza sets the outcome. It begins with morning awakening, and asks that the singer may “arise” in a certain state: “pure, and fresh, and sinless” in God’s eyes. Here, I deem, is the deepest unspoken truth of this hymn. It was not a child lying down to sleep, but an adult full of, and wearied by, the characteristics of human life in this as-yet-unredeemed world. The key here is that word “sinless.” What makes this night a night that ends with the sleeper awakening free of sin? Perhaps because she was indeed restrained from any evil; perhaps, among those who would do evil in the night, she included herself.
What might be the evil of the night? Two answers arise, neither of them complete yet each a part of the truth. The first arises from the remembrance that it was “night” into which Judas went when he betrayed Jesus. The prototypical sin of the night is to betray Jesus.
Which leads to the second answer. The evil of the night is to fall into sin at the end of life. The day that is over, the day that is yielding to the shadows that creep, is the day of our life. The singer is approaching her end. And she is tempted to do “some evil.”
In our day, one particular temptation is to cut short our life deliberately, a temptation increasingly available with medical assistance in various places. “Those who plan some evil” might well be planning that in particular, though night evils also include all the well-worn sins that people have ever planned. Whatever the evil might be, it seems to me the singer imagines herself, perhaps from sheer weariness, as a potential perpetrator.
But the singer prays God’s restraint upon evil, even as she prays to awaken “pure, and fresh, and sinless” in her resurrected body in the presence of God. There, please God, we will give thanks for every day we lived, and for Jesus who closed our eyelids with his “tenderest blessing,” who comforts all who suffer including us in our sufferings, whose Father sent angels to watch over us every day and night of our lives, and who, at the end, would waken us to himself, “pure, and fresh, and sinless.”
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Out & About. Sunday, June 21, I am to preach at St. John the Apostle church in Pottsboro, one of our northmost congregations in the diocese of Dallas. The service is at 10 a.m.