We therefore pray thee, help thy servants, whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood.
Make them to be numbered with thy Saints, in glory everlasting.
O Lord, save thy people, and bless thine heritage.
Govern them, and lift them up for ever.
Day by day we magnify thee;
And we worship thy Name ever, world without end.
Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin.
O Lord, have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us.
O Lord, let thy mercy be upon us, as our trust is in thee.
O Lord, in thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.[A]

Version of the

AMERICAN EPISCOPAL CHURCH PRAYER-BOOK.

[Footnote A: This venerable hymn, familiar as a part of the morning
service in the Roman Catholic and Protestant Episcopal Churches, and
on special occasions in many Protestant Churches, has usually been
ascribed to the great St. Ambrose of Milan and St. Augustine, his
greater convert, in the year 387 A.D. But, like other productions of
mighty influence, it was doubtless a growth. Portions of it appear
in the writings of St. Cyprian (252 A.D.) and others in still earlier
liturgical forms of the Greek Church in Alexandria during the century
previous. It is thus probably the earliest, as it is certainly the
most universal and famous, of Christian hymns. It was translated from
the Latin into English in 1549 for the Anglican Book of Common Prayer,
which assumed its present form in 1660--during that wonderful era
which gave us the English Bible, with its unapproached majesty and
music of language.]