Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
A great many Americans, especially those no longer young, will remember learning this prayer in their childhood. Parents of many different faith traditions passed it on to their children to say at night before they went off to sleep. It was easy to learn because of its rhymes and its rhythm. In addition, only one word, the word “before,” has more than one syllable.
My memory of this prayer, beloved by so many, stirred this past week when I received for review a new book called “As I Lay Dying: Meditations Upon Returning.” Written by Richard John Neuhaus, this slim volume offers the reflections of a priest who very nearly died after surgery for cancer. To my surprise I discovered that Father Neuhaus continues to say this prayer as an adult.
He also surprised me by mentioning the distant origins of the prayer. Its model is commonly said to have been a Latin prayer published in 1160. This twelfth-century work was apparently a later edition of one from the hand of Pope Leo III who became famous for crowning Charlemagne in the year 800.
After researching its origins further, I discovered the reason why so many Americans came to know the prayer. It entered into this country’s culture through a book published in Boston by Benjamin Harris, who emigrated there from England in 1686. Sometime between 1687 and 1690, it seems, he issued a little book that would become famous in America.
He included the “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” prayer in The New England Primer which became a basic schoolbook among the Puritans in the American colonies. It was a catechism intended for children and illustrated with engravings designed to hold their attention. In addition to questions and answers about their religion, boys and girls could find pious sayings and simple prayers. The famous prayer under discussion here did not appear until the edition of 1737; from then on it became widely known.
The author of an introduction to one edition of the New England Primer says of its author: “Harris deserves notice as a confirmed scribbler . . . To this was added an ardent love of the Protestant religion, and an equal hatred of the Pope and all that this implies.” Presumably, he would have felt bewildered had he known how many Catholic children like me were to learn the prayer he had printed.
To test its current reputation, I recently asked a group of college undergraduates if they had heard of the prayer. My informal survey produced near unanimity: almost to a person these young men and women knew of it.
The prayer itself offers surprisingly rich spiritual content. It reveals a trust in God that helps explain why adults like Father Neuhaus continue to make use of it. It breathes the spirituality of abandonment, that is, the handing over of one’s security to God.
No matter what happens, even sudden death, the person praying remains confident of remaining in the care of the Lord. In its own way, the prayer accords with the words of Jesus on the cross: “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit.”
This kind of commitment to divine providence does not come easy. Despite the simple and almost sentimental language of the prayer, actually trusting oneself to God requires deep faith and spiritual maturity.
A newspaper colleague has told me that he finds the prayer “scary.” He considers its message about death too disturbing to be given to children. But, in past centuries, death came to young people much more often than it does today, at least in middle-class America. And, to judge from my reading of The New England Primer, the religion of the people who used it was stern and rigorous.
Those modern-day adults who have adopted these words as a good night prayer and have gone to sleep repeating it as a form of commitment to God no doubt find it a more flexible and consoling private ritual. For them, it can express a deep spirituality and a loving attachment to the source of their lives.
Richard Griffin