There is an eye that never sleeps

Authors:
Themes:
Scriptures:
  • 1 Samuel 2:8
  • Psalms 121:3-4
  • Psalms 34:15
  • Psalms 75:3
  • Isaiah 40:28-31
  • 1 Corinthians 13:8
  • Colossians 1:17
  • Titus 2:11
  • Hebrews 1:3
  • Hebrews 4:16
  • 1 Peter 3:12
Book Number:
  • 613

There is an eye that never sleeps
beneath the wing of night;
there is an ear that never shuts
when sink the beams of light.

2. There is an arm that never tires
when human strength gives way;
there is a love which never fails
when earthly loves decay.

3. That eye is fixed on angel throngs,
that arm upholds the sky,
that ear is filled with heavenly songs,
that love is throned on high.

4. But there’s a power which we can wield
when mortal aid is vain,
that eye, that arm, that love to reach,
that listening ear to gain.

5. That power is prayer, which soars on high
through Jesus to the throne,
and moves the hand which moves the world,
to bring salvation down.

John A Wallace 1802-70

The Church - The Life of Prayer

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Tunes

  • St Marguerite
    St Marguerite
    Metre:
    • CM (Common Metre: 86 86)
    Composer:
    • Walker, Edward Charles
  • Albano
    Albano
    Metre:
    • CM (Common Metre: 86 86)
    Composer:
    • Novello, Vincent

The story behind the hymn

Like 243 or 862, and unlike 324 or 612, here is a text with stzs in a logical sequence which cannot be rearranged. It is John Wallace’s single contribution to this book as to a small handful of mainly evangelical hymnals, written in 1839 and published that year in the Scottish Christian Herald of 28 Sept. The only change from his text is ‘we’ for ‘man’ at 4.1. In 1980 John Ferguson, preferring the first 2 stzs to the rest, wrote his own 3–5 (‘But that almighty loving God …’), which featured in his own Hymns of a Layman … in 1982.

The words have often been sung to the Michael Haydn adaptation SALZBURG, 873; another 2nd Series, in the possibility is ALBANO (607). ST MARGUERITE was composed by Edward Walker for There is a land of pure delight (where it also appears here, 975) in the 1876 edn of The Bristol Tune Book, and set to key of A flat; ‘a pleasant tune with no high pretensions’ (Routley). This hymn begins in the same way, which may have influenced its choice.

A look at the author

Wallace, John Aikman

b Edinburgh 1802, d Trinity, nr Brechin, Midlothian (Angus) 1870. An ordained minister in the Ch of Scotland, serving at Hawick (Border), who left at the Disruption of 1843 for the Free Church along with Thos Chalmers, Horatius Bonar (qv) and hundreds of other clergy. He is now remembered mainly for his one enduring hymn originally contributed to the Scottish Christian Herald in 1839, and included in anthologies of Christian quotations, notably on prayer. His work features in English evangelical hymn-books rather than any recent Scottish ones; he achieves a brief note of 3 lines only in the Appendix (part 1) to Julian. A striking photographic portrait survives. (Translations by another J Wallace of some classic Lat hymns, published in 1874, are also noted in JJ’s Dictionary; and one other hymnal gives JAW’s name as ‘James C Wallace’, apparently in error. No.613.