When you lie down with a short prayer, commit yourself into the hands of your Creator and when you have done so, trust Him with yourself, as you must do when you are dying.

The saying urges a nightly practice of surrender: before sleep—an image of vulnerability and a traditional “little death”—one should offer a brief prayer and entrust oneself to God. Taylor’s comparison to dying intensifies the counsel: the same faith required at life’s end should be rehearsed daily, so that trust becomes habitual rather than improvised in crisis. The emphasis is less on elaborate devotion than on a simple act of committal, cultivating humility, dependence, and peace. In Taylor’s Anglican devotional outlook, such repeated self-abandonment trains the conscience, quiets anxiety, and frames ordinary rest as preparation for mortality and for meeting one’s Creator.