Religion: Help of the Helpless

Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. —St. Luke 24: 29

These words, spoken by the disciples at Emmaus, rang in the mind of the Rev. Henry Francis Lyte. All his life long the gentle English Methodist had hoped to leave something behind him to testify to the glory of God. Though his books of poems* were well enough received, Lyte feared that they would not long survive him. In 1847, when he was 54, he felt that his life was almost over. Consumption and asthma, from which he had suffered for more than half his years, would not leave him much more time.

During these last days the moment came that he had always hoped for. The result was one of the best known hymns in the English language: Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens: Lord, with me abide! When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, 0 abide with me!

For a hundred years these words have been sung,† or spoken, or whispered by men & women in time of need. The words were sung while the Titanic was sinking and on the beaches of Dunkirk. In World War I, Nurse Edith Cavell repeated the hymn as she faced the firing squad. It has often been heard in prison camps, and it has sounded faintly through the wreckage of caved-in mines:

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day; Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away; Change and decay in all around I see; 0 Thou who changest not, abide with me!

This Sunday in England’s Westminster Abbey, under the statue dedicated to Methodism’s hymn-writing founders, John and Charles Wesley, a memorial tablet will be unveiled to Henry Francis Lyte. And in almost every country throughout the world Christians will celebrate the centenary of his death and of the composition of his long-lived hymn.

Hold Thou Thy Cross before my closing eyes; Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies; Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee: In life, in death, 0 Lord, abide with me!

* One of them, the hymn Praise, my Soul, the King of Heaven, has been selected by Princess Elizabeth as the opening hymn at her wedding. † To the tune composed by William Henry Monk, first musical editor of the Church of England’s Hymns Ancient and Modern.