However dark the night of doubt, day is sure to come.
In October 1773, William Cowper was broken by a nightmarish attack of the depression that had clouded his life for almost twenty years. His neighbour the Revd John Newton had encouraged Cowper to write hymns to keep the depression at bay, but after his breakdown he never wrote another. Samuel Greatheed, who preached at Cowper’s funeral, said that this, his last, was composed during a solitary walk in the fields, and expressed a faith that always reasserted itself once the fits had passed.