Growing up with evening services I have memories of setting sunlight on pews and sometimes quite doleful evening music with quite doleful evening congregations. There were, happily, many exceptions to this. Overall I used to, and still do, prefer evening services to morning ones. London thankfully has many evening services but there are many English towns with hardly one at all.
So it is rare today that a congregation sings At even e.er the sun was set, a hymn which is full of great lines but strangely the only one of Henry Twells' hymns to make it into 20th century consciousness before the 21st century snuffed it out.
I think a special line, describing gathered worshippers, recognises a genuine mark of holiness:
and they who fain would serve thee best are conscious most of wrong within
Too many of us worship with an attitude of entitlement, but a God-sensitive conscience will never allow this.
For other blogs in this series click on the 'hymnline' tag
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