"Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;/Praise Him, all creatures here below;/Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;/Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
Sung as a doxology to an old Protestant tune commonly known as "Old One Hundredth," it is one of the great hymns, both simple in its words and stirring to the human heart. Less well known is its author, one of the less well known saintly clergymen of England, the Rev. Thomas Ken.
Thomas Ken was born in Hertfordshire, England, in 1637. By a happy chance, he had a stepsister, Anne, who married the famous fisherman Ikaak Walton, author of "The Compleate Angler," one of the earliest manuals for fishermen. Walton was also a biographer of famous clergyman, and so young Ken seems to have come under the influence of Walton's stories about the great Anglican divines such as George Herbert, John Donne and Richard Hooker.
As a young man he went up to Oxford and after graduation was made a tutor. Later writers who remembered young Ken described him organizing evenings for singing, which seems to fit with his later writings. He was ordained a deacon and priest, had held various offices in the church, and was known for his prayerful and gentle spirituality.
Ken was known in his day to be an extremely fine preacher and his sermons were always well attended, and so it was not a surprise that he attracted the attention of the king, then the rather debauched Charles II. King Charles sent Ken to Holland as chaplain to his daughter Princess Mary, but the priest soon annoyed her husband, Prince William of Orange, with his piety and he returned to England.
Ken also managed to annoy the king. One evening King Charles, who was very well into his wine, showed up at Ken's door and demanded a room for the evening for himself and the royal mistress, the "actress" Nelle Gwynne. Parson Ken shouted out the window that he would of course welcome his liege and king but not an immoral woman into his home.
King Charles and Nelle went off to party elsewhere and the king remembered the snub, but in a kind manner. But when the Diocese of Bath and Wells became vacant and it was time to select a new bishop, the king declared that he would have no one else but "the good little man that refused his lodging to poor Nelle." In time, Bishop Ken was one of those summoned to the deathbed of the king.
Ken soon managed to offend the new king, James II, the old king's younger brother and a devout Roman Catholic. When King James ordered all clergy of the Protestant Church of England to read a decree of toleration from their pulpits, with view to legitimizing Catholicism in England, Ken was one of the seven stalwart Anglican bishops who refused to read it as it was an imposition from outside the state church. He managed to avoid imprisonment, and the king was himself removed from power in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
But the accession of Protestant King William III, whom Ken had earlier annoyed in Holland, caused a new problem. Ken has disliked the previous king's Catholicism, but he had sworn an oath of loyalty to him, as had all the clergy of the realm. As such, his conscience forbade him to swear another oath of loyalty to the new monarchs, William and Mary. King William had no such qualms and Bishop Ken was soon deposed from his office and forced to retire into private life.
Like many out-of-favor clergymen, Ken became a school teacher, as some of us do right down to the present day. As fortune would have it, back in Oxford days, Ken had been friends with a man named Thomas Thynne. Thynne was now a viscount and had a considerable fortune, and he took his old college friend on board his estates.
When Thynne founded a posh private school for poor boys, Ken was made a kind of unofficial chaplain. It was in these final years of his life that he wrote a great deal of poetry and the hymns for which he is best known.
Interestingly, in the Anglican Church at the time, hymns were not commonly sung in church services, although this was changing in his lifetime. From the days of the Elizabethan Reformation, the preferred music was supposed to be all scriptural, such as the Psalms and canticles of the Bible.
Ken's hymns were written and encouraged for use in private devotion. He encouraged the school boys to sing in their rooms as part of their prayer life, but his music crept down the hallways into the chapels for public worship even in his own lifetime.
Ken's famous "doxology" is the final part of a larger hymn which is not commonly used now, called "Awake my soul and with the sun," which at his request was sung at his funeral by the boys of his school in 1711. Also at his request, the funeral was held at sunrise, probably to represent the idea of death as a resurrection to new life.
He is better known for an evening hymn, "All Praise to Thee, my God, this Night," to which the famous "doxology" is often appended at the end as well. I remember it being sung at Oxford, and parts of it are currently in the Office of Night Prayer, in the modern Liturgy of the Hours, better known as the Catholic Breviary.
It remains a beautiful prayer to end the day with and I recite it often. As we move into these summer months when the days grow long at sunset, add it to your own prayers and pray along with Bishop Ken.
"All praise to Thee, my God, this night,
"For all the blessings of the light
"Keep me, O keep me, King of Kings,
"Beneath Thine own almighty wings.
"Forgive me, Lord, for Thy dear Son,
"The ill that I this day have done,
"That with the world, myself, and Thee,
"I, ere I sleep, at peace may be.
"Teach me to live, that I may dread
"The grave as little as my bed.
"Teach me to die, that so I may
"Rise glorious at the judgment day.
"O may my soul on Thee repose,
"And with sweet sleep mine eyelids close,
"Sleep that may me more vigorous make
"To serve my God when I awake.
"When in the night I sleepless lie,
"My soul with heavenly thoughts supply;
"Let no ill dreams disturb my rest,
"No powers of darkness me molest.
"O when shall I, in endless day,
"For ever chase dark sleep away,
"And hymns divine with angels sing,
"All praise to thee, eternal King?
"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
"Praise Him, all creatures here below;
"Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
"Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
Gregory Elder, a Redlands resident, is a professor of history and humanities at Moreno Valley College and a Roman Catholic priest. Write to him at Professing Faith, P.O. Box 8102, Redlands, CA 92375-1302, email him at askfathergregory@verizon.net or follow him on Twitter at Fatherelder.
