Night watches go back to Bible times and before. The Israelites set watchmen on the walls to keep the city safe from the enemy at night. And a psalm says, "Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."Ps. 127:1.
Christ Jesus sometimes kept a prayer-watch during the night. The Gospel of Luke records one instance: "And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God."Luke 6:12.
A biographer of Mary Baker Eddy notes that on several occasions when she faced severe challenges, she asked some of her students to be "watchers" during the night hours.See Richard A. Nenneman, Persistent Pilgrim (Etna, New Hampshire: Nebbadoon Press, 1997), p. 324 . A worker in Mrs. Eddy's home wrote, "At times [Mrs. Eddy] had mighty wrestlings with error. . . . One morning she quoted the seventeenth verse of the eleventh chapter of I Corinthians, and then, revealing a bit of her struggle, she added, as I afterward wrote down:
