Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

The author, the Rev. Thomas Ken, was born in Berkhampstead,
Hertfordshire, Eng., July, 1637, and was educated at Winchester School,
Hertford College, and New College, Oxford. In 1662 he took holy orders,
and seventeen years later the king (Charles II.) appointed him chaplain
to his sister Mary, Princess of Orange. Later the king, just before his
death, made him Bishop of Bath and Wells.

Like John the Baptist, and Bourdaloue, and Knox, he was a faithful
spiritual monitor and adviser during all his days at court. "I must go
in and hear Ken tell me my faults," the king used to say at chapel time.
The "good little man" (as he called the bishop) never lost the favor of
the dissipated monarch. As Macaulay says, "Of all the prelates, he liked
Ken the best."

Under James, the Papist, Ken was a loyal subject, though once arrested
as one of the "seven bishops" for his opposition to the king's religion,
and he kept his oath of allegiance so firmly that it cost him his place.
William III. deprived him of his bishopric, and he retired in poverty to
a home kindly offered him by Lord Viscount Weymouth in Longleat, near
Frome, in Somersetshire, where he spent a serene and beloved old age. He
died æt. seventy-four, March 17, 1711 (N.S.), and was carried to his
grave, according to his request, by "six of the poorest men in the
parish."

His great doxology is the refrain or final stanza of each of his three
long hymns, "Morning," "Evening" and "Midnight," printed in a _Prayer
Manual_ for the use of the students of Winchester College. The "Evening
Hymn" drew scenic inspiration, it is told, from the lovely view in