John Mason Neale's "A time to watch, a time to pray" was written as a dedicated seasonal piece for Good Friday. It made its first public appearance in his influential collection, Hymns for Children, published in 1842.
The original text was structured into 6 stanzas, with each stanza containing 4 lines. For the final stanza of the piece, Neale appended Bishop Thomas Ken's classic doxology ("Praise God, from whom all blessings flow"), a common nineteenth-century practice to anchor children's hymns in familiar, orthodox praise.
The hymn was later selected for inclusion in The Children's Hymn Book, edited by Mrs. Carey Brock.
Mrs. Brock introduced two distinct editorial revisions. First, she omitted Bishop Ken's closing doxology entirely, shortening the hymn. Second, she made a minor textual alteration in the first line of the third stanza, changing the original phrase "to-day" to "this day." Beyond these localized adjustments, the core of Neale's original text was preserved unaltered for congregational use.
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