Believers' Lullaby by Thomas Ken

All praise to thee, my God, this night, 

For all the blessings of the light;

Keep me, O keep me, King of kings,

Beneath thine own almighty wings.

Forgive me, Lord, for thy dear Son,

The ills that I this day have done;

That with the world, myself, and thee,

I, ere I sleep, at peace may be.

Teach me to live that I may dread

The grave as little as my bed;

Teach me to die so that I may

Rise glorious at the judgment day.

O may my soul on thee repose,

And with sweet sleep mine eyelids close;

Sleep that may me more vig'rous make 

to serve my God when I awake.

When in the night I sleepless lie,

My soul with heav'nly thoughts supply;

Let no ill dreams disturb my rest,

No pow'rs of darkness me molest.

*Dull sleep of sense me to deprive,

I am but half my time alive,

Thy faithful lovers, Lord, are griev'd,

To lie so long of thee bereav'd.

*Yet tho' sleep o'er my frailty reigns,

Let it not hold me long in chains;

And now and then let loose my heart,

Till it a hallelujah dart.

O when shall I in endless day

For ever chase dark sleep away,

And hymns with the supernal choir

Incessant sing, and never tire!

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;

Praise him, all creatures here below;

Praise him above, ye heav'nly host:

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Tune: Tallis' Evening Hymn

*not so commonly sung of Thomas Ken's original lyrics 

Carl Linnaeus the Believer

Quotes from his journals:

Pg 18

The forest abounded with flowers...their blossoms were all closed. Who has endowed plants with intelligence, to shut themselves up at the approach of rain? Even when the weather changes in a moment from sunshine to rain, though before expanded, they immediately close.

Pg 38

Arriving in the evening...I saw the sunset apparently on the summit of a high mountain.... This spectacle I considered as not one of the least of nature's miracles. Oh Lord, how wonderful are thy works!

Pg 51

7 June

This day was a Sunday, hence we rested here all day.

Pg 53

The bill is the most remarkable thing about this bird, the avocet; it is black, bent downwards, three times longer than the head. It is all the more remarkable since it is the only species to which the Creator has given a recurved bill, which it uses like a plow in the mud, to find its food.

Pg 95

At the risk of our lives we left the harbor in a furious sea.... The waves raged, the ship was thrown between the roaring billows, my companions became seasick, the rigging burst, our hearts filled with despair and we committed our fate to God's hands....

Pg 97

by William T. Stearn

... The most influential and useful of his contributions to be biology undoubtedly is his successful introduction of.. two word names for individual kinds with one word for the whole group of the objects but the other word limiting the name to a single member of the group....

In all he coined usable names for roughly 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 species of plants.... Botanical names published before 1753 have no standing in modern nomenclature unless they were adopted by him....

The basis of Linnaeus's achievement was a strong sense of order....

Reared in a pious atmosphere, spared from death on his travels, always strongly egotistic, Linnaeus could excusably believe himself God's chosen instrument for revealing in an orderly way the divinely ordered works of Creation, and he did not spare himself in that task.

ISBN 0-684 15976-7

Newborns Cry in Their Mother Tongue

German researchers say babies begin to pick up the nuances of their parents' accents while still in the womb.

The researchers studied the cries of 60 healthy babies born to families speaking French and German.

The French newborns cried with a rising "accent" while the German babies' cries had a falling inflection.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, they say the babies are probably trying to form a bond with their mothers by imitating them.

(Continued)