Part 8

Watts’s hymns were greatly helped in public favour by the publication of his _Psalms_ in 1719. The Dissenting Churches, for the most part, soon agreed with his own judgement that the two books were ‘such a sufficient provision for psalmody as to answer most occasions of the Christian’s life.’ Long use had made psalm-singing as a distinct part of the service essential, and it was many years before the Dissenting Churches cared for a hymn-book which did not make the distinction between psalms and hymns. The place of honour, or at least of precedence, was given to the Psalms, and as far as possible every psalm was paraphrased.

Watts’s preface to _The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament and Applied to the Christian State and Worship_ is a vigorous manifesto, and it may well have seemed to some men as audacious as many readers find Wesley’s famous preface. His chief contention was that Jewish psalms must be translated, paraphrased, or, to use his own word, ‘imitated’ in Christian language before they are fit for use in Christian worship. He specially emphasizes the small number of psalms sung at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and, gaining courage as he writes, adds, ‘Though, to speak my own sense freely, I do not think David ever wrote a psalm of sufficient glory and sweetness to represent the blessings of this holy institution.’

Acting upon this conviction Watts boldly departed from the ideal of most of those who have paraphrased the Psalter.

In all places I have kept my grand design in view, and that is, to teach my author to speak like a Christian.... I have chosen rather to imitate than translate, and thus to compose a psalm-book for Christians, after the manner of the Jewish Psalter.... I have not been so curious and exact in striving everywhere to express the ancient sense and meaning of David, but have rather expressed myself as I may suppose David would have done, had he lived in the days of Christianity.[98]

Not only does common sense confirm Watts’s general principle; his own success, partial though it was, justified the new departure, and from his day to ours the most useful and the most poetic versions of Psalms are those which ‘teach the author to speak like a Christian.’ Yet, if a psalm could be dealt with from the Old Testament standpoint without inappropriateness to Christian worship, Watts preferred to retain the original idea. Thus in all his versions of the 23rd Psalm he makes no reference to the Good Shepherd of the New Testament. His best version—and it is very good—is as suitable for the synagogue as the meeting-house.

My Shepherd will supply my need; Jehovah is His Name; In pastures fresh He makes me feed, Beside the living stream.

The _Methodist Hymn-book_ omits the last verse, which is given in most other collections—

There would I find a settled rest, While others go and come; No more a stranger or a guest, But like a child at home.

It is a beautiful paraphrase of ‘Thy house for ever.’ He felt, however, that his experiment was so novel and so likely to provoke adverse criticism, that he continually explained or defended his versions in notes appended to the psalms, which form a sort of running commentary.

Watts’s _Psalms_ mark the passage from psalm-singing to hymn-singing. Slowly but surely the distinction disappears from modern hymn-books, and psalm-versions take their place amongst ‘hymns.’ This was not Watts’s design, but it is a part of the success of his enterprise. If to-day we had to make choice of any one metrical version of the Psalter for use in Christian worship, it would be impossible to find anything better than Watts’s. Indeed, if feeble ‘aliters’ (to use Barton’s phrase) and poor verses were omitted, the result would show how near he came to achieving success.

It is difficult to overstate the service rendered to the worship of the Christian Church by Dr. Watts. As Lord Selborne says, ‘He was the first to understand the nature of the want,’ and he ‘led the way in providing for it.’ Yet it is easy to quote poor verses, to find lines that are intolerably flat. His rhymes are often either discordant in the extreme or lacking altogether. Sometimes he is too colloquial, as in

Well, the Redeemer’s gone To appear before our God.

Perhaps no hymn-writer needs editing so much as Watts, and certainly none has been edited more skilfully. Not a few of his hymns owe their place in our hymnals to the judicious way in which they have been ‘improved.’ We cannot dispute Dr. Johnson’s criticism

The rhymes are not always sufficiently correspondent.... His lines are commonly smooth and easy, and his thoughts always religiously pure; but who is there that, to so much piety and innocence, does not wish for a greater measure of sprightliness and vigour?[99]

Hymn-writers are in a special degree affected by their surroundings. There is an open-air life in many of the psalms attributed to David which is lacking in those—e.g. the cxix.—which belong to a more formal age. Watts was a student, a scholar, a recluse, an invalid, who yet came into frequent contact with the Church life of the Independents. He could not be coarse or fantastic, and he both consciously and conscientiously condescended to men of low estate. The sacrifice of his own taste to that of the unlearned reader was part of his offering to the Lord, and it did not cost him nothing. The pity of it is that he misjudged and under-estimated the intelligence of those who would use his hymns. It is but just to bear his self-imposed limitation in mind, yet it must also be allowed that, like many a far greater poet—Wordsworth, for example—he did not know which were the superior and which the inferior pieces. He believed his _Lyrics_ to be his best poetical work, and possibly this may have been the judgement of his friendly contemporaries; but the severer taste of later times has forgotten the _Lyrics_ while treasuring the hymns.

Watts seldom writes without a consciousness of the congregation for whose use he intended his hymns. The story—probably true—that he undertook to write one every week for the Independent Chapel at Southampton explains the character of very many of them, and accounts at once for their strength and weakness. On the one hand, he avoided the tiresome verbosity of Tate and Brady and the halting rhythm of Barton and, on the other, he abstained from the ‘conceits’ which are the charm of Herbert and Vaughan, but which make many a lovely poem impossible as a hymn. The ease and simplicity of his best hymns, which no hymn-writer surpasses and few have attained, endeared them to ‘men of heart sincere,’ alike among the unlearned and ignorant and among men of culture. He has that sweet, plaintive undertone of perplexity concerning the mysteries of life and death which touches all thoughtful souls, and is so true to the inner life of one whose many infirmities made him die daily. He had in large measure the rich indwelling of the word of God without which a man may write hymns, but can never be one of God’s great singers. His hymns are full of scriptural phrases, though less so than those of Charles Wesley, and he has many happy and instructive applications of passages both from the Old and New Testament. Take, for instance, one of his sacramental hymns, in which he uses the parable of the Great Supper as a type of the Supper of the Lord—an application singularly appropriate, though not often made.[100]

How rich are Thy provisions, Lord, Thy table furnished from above; The fruits of life o’erspread the board, The cup o’erflows with heavenly love.

We are the poor, the blind, the lame, And help was far and death was nigh; But at the gospel-call we came, And every want received supply.

From the highway that leads to hell, From paths of darkness and despair, Lord, we are come with Thee to dwell, Glad to enjoy Thy presence here.

It cost Him death to save our lives, To buy our souls it cost His own, And all the unknown joys He gives, Were bought with agonies unknown.[101]

The ‘sacramentarian’ element is naturally absent from Watts’s twenty-five hymns ‘prepared for the holy ordinance of the Lord’s Supper,’ which are, with a few exceptions, much less solemn and impressive than those of Wesley. Two have, however, a permanent place among our Communion hymns. The seventh of the series, ‘Crucifixion to the World by the Cross of Christ’—

When I survey the wondrous Cross

is so great a hymn, and consecrated by so many hallowed associations, that comment is superfluous and criticism impertinent. The third, ‘The New Testament in the Blood of Christ, or The New Covenant Sealed,’ is absent from the chief hymnals to-day with the exception of the Methodist, to which it was added in 1830. It begins—

‘The promise of my Father’s love Shall stand for ever good,’ He said; and gave His soul to death, And sealed the grace with blood.

Watts wrote no great festival hymns to be compared with ‘Hark! how all the welkin rings,’ or ‘Hail the day that sees Him rise.’ His best work is found in his hymns and spiritual songs, some of which are among the most spiritual and most scriptural ever written. The tone of triumph is comparatively rare, though now and again, as in ‘Join all the glorious names,’ he rises as high as ever Charles Wesley rose in his hymns for ‘Believers rejoicing.’ Such are, ‘My God, the spring of all my joys’; ‘Come, we that love the Lord’; ‘Jesus shall reign where’er the sun’; ‘Come, let us join our cheerful songs.’

To Dr. Watts, with his delicate health and protracted sicknesses, songs in a minor key were peculiarly suitable, and some of his most precious hymns are those which speak of the life to come. He seldom writes of death as Wesley does, and such a line as

Ah, lovely appearance of death

would have been impossible to him; but no Christian poet has touched the sorrows of our hearts more tenderly or comforted the bereaved more wisely than he has done in such a hymn as

Give me the wings of faith to rise;

while

There is a land of pure delight

has voiced the thoughts of myriads of anxious souls, to whom only ‘a prospect of heaven’ could make ‘death easy.’ Watts seldom, if ever, showed the ecstasy of Charles Wesley. He never sang

The promised land, from Pisgah’s top, I now exult to see;

but he knew that

Could we but climb where Moses stood, And view the landscape o’er, Not Jordan’s stream nor death’s cold flood Should fright us from the shore.

There are few more tender lines than the verse in his hymn for ‘The Death and Burial of a Saint’—

The graves of all His saints He blessed, And softened every bed: Where should the dying members rest, But with their dying Head?

But Dr. Watts was not a man whose whole thought was centred on the world to come. After the fashion not only of his own time, but of the religious men of most times, he speaks slightingly of earth and its charms; but when he allows himself to dwell on its beauty and glory he writes, I think, with a clearer and more poetic vision than Wesley, as in his ‘Song to Creating Wisdom’—

Eternal Wisdom, Thee we praise.

The hymns of Dr. Watts are so well known that it is difficult to select any that would worthily represent him without repeating what is already familiar to every reader. ‘The Cradle Song’ is one of the most delightful lullabies ever written, and shows Watts in a charming and unexpected light.

Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber; Holy angels guard thy bed! Heavenly blessings without number Gently falling on thy head.

Sleep, my babe; thy food and raiment, House and home, thy friends provide; All without thy care or payment, All thy wants are well supplied.

How much better thou’rt attended Than the Son of God could be, When from heaven He descended, And became a child like thee!

Soft and easy is thy cradle: Coarse and hard thy Saviour lay: When His birthplace was a stable, And His softest bed was hay.

Blessèd Babe, what glorious features, Spotless, fair, divinely bright! Must He dwell with brutal creatures?— How could angels bear the sight!

Was there nothing but a manger Cursèd sinners could afford To receive the heavenly Stranger? Did they thus affront their Lord?

Soft, my child—I did not chide thee, Though my song might sound too hard; ’Tis thy mother sits beside thee, And her arm shall be thy guard.

Yet to read the shameful story, How the Jews abused their King; How they served the Lord of Glory, Makes me angry while I sing.

See the kinder shepherds round Him, Telling wonders from the sky! There they sought Him, there they found Him, With His Virgin Mother by.

See the lovely Babe a-dressing; Lovely Infant, how He smiled! When He wept, the Mother’s blessing Soothed and hushed the holy Child.

Lo, He slumbers in His manger, Where the hornèd oxen fed; Peace, my darling, here’s no danger; Here’s no ox a-near thy bed!

’Twas to save thee, child, from dying, Save my dear from burning flame, Bitter groans, and endless crying, That thy blest Redeemer came.

May’st thou live to know and fear Him, Trust and love Him all thy days; Then go dwell for ever near Him, See His face, and sing His praise!

I could give thee thousand kisses, Hoping what I most desire; Not a mother’s fondest wishes Can to greater joys aspire.[102]

From Isaac Watts we turn naturally to Philip Doddridge (1702-51), another name which is amongst the glories of the Nonconforming Churches, and of him also it may be said that every Christian Church would rejoice to have adopted him. He was the twentieth child of his parents, was all his life in delicate health, and died of consumption at Lisbon, where he was buried in the English cemetery. His life was happy and devout from the earliest days, when he learnt from his mother’s lips the Bible stories which were illustrated by the Dutch tiles in the fireplace in his childhood’s home in London—‘London! dear city of my youth!’ On his father’s side he was descended from a good stock of English gentlemen, some of whom were men of renown in their own generation. His father was a tradesmen, but his grandfather was Rector of Shepperton until the Act of Uniformity made him a Nonconformist. His mother was the daughter of a Protestant refugee from Bohemia, whose Bible (Luther’s version) he kept as his most cherished possession. As a child he attracted the notice of the Duchess of Bedford, who offered to send him to Oxford or Cambridge, and to provide a living for him if he took orders in the Church of England. He declined the offer, though discouraged by the great Dissenter, Calamy, in his purpose of entering the Independent ministry. But his old friend and pastor, Samuel Clark, of St. Albans (author of _Scripture Promises_), encouraged him, bidding him come to his house and make it his home during his preliminary studies.

Like Watts, he was a scholar and a gentleman, and was revered and loved in all Churches. Doddridge was a man of broad views and wide sympathies, and was honoured by the enmity of Watts’s old adversary, Thomas Bradbury, whose ‘zeal and fury’ in opposing ‘Moravians and Methodists and all who will not go his length in putting them down’ he deprecated. Indeed, his sympathy with Methodism led less vehement Dissenters than Bradbury to remonstrate with him, and when he not only preached at Whitefield’s Tabernacle, but invited that great evangelist to preach in his chapel at Northampton, even moderate men in his own communion thought he had given just offence to the Nonconformist conscience of the day. He found it necessary to explain and apologize for his patronage of the enthusiasm which sober Churchmen and Dissenters alike abhorred.

His hymns were often written to be sung in his own chapel at the Castle Hill, Northampton, and were upon the subjects of his sermons. Written on the same principle as Watts’s hymns, they belong to the same class; and while they are on the whole inferior to those of Watts, they make a distinct and very precious addition to our hymnals. There is less variety of theme, metre, and expression in Doddridge than in Watts, but he is rarely so completely on the level of the ‘vulgar capacities’ for whom his great predecessor had such a tender regard. His hymns are the prayers and praises of a saint, ‘they shine,’ as Montgomery said, ‘in the beauty of holiness,’ and some must live while Christianity endures.

He is like Watts also in his indebtedness to editors. The best known of the hymns that bear his name, ‘O God of Bethel,’ would make a fine specimen for a polychrome hymn-book, though I venture to suggest that no ‘higher critic’ could pick out the portions supplied by the various revisers if he were left solely to subjective considerations. Dr. Julian says that its authorship should be thus described—‘P. Doddridge, Jan. 173⁶/₇ Scottish Trs. and Paraphs., 1745; J. Logan, 1781; and Scottish Paraphs., 1781.’

The earliest form is still extant in Doddridge’s own handwriting.

No. XXXII JACOB’S VOW.

From Gen. xxxiii. 20, 22.

1

O God of Bethel, by whose Hand Thine Israel still is fed Who thro’ this weary Pilgrimage Hast all our Fathers led

2

To thee our humble Vows we raise To thee address our Prayer, And in thy kind and faithful Breast Deposite all our Care

3

If thou thro’ each perplexing Path Wilt be our constant Guide If thou wilt daily Bread supply And Raiment wilt provide

4

If thou wilt spread thy Shield around Till these our wand’rings cease And at our Father’s loved Abode Our Souls arrive in Peace

5

To thee as to our Covenant God We’ll our whole selves resign And count that not our tenth alone But all we have is Thine. January 16, 173⁶/₇.[103]

Another hymn, even better known and loved than this, at least amongst Methodist congregations, is—

O happy day that fixed my choice.

This also has been edited to its advantage. It has been the birthday song of countless redeemed souls. Dr. A. B. Bruce says that St. Matthew’s feast, at which ‘a great company of publicans and of others sat down,’ ‘was a kind of poem, saying for Matthew what Doddridge’s familiar lines say for many another.’[104]

Contemporary with Watts and Doddridge, but having closer spiritual affinity with John Bunyan, was Joseph Hart (1712-68), whose hymns, with two or three exceptions, have almost disappeared from our hymnals, though in older books, and in Spurgeon’s _Our Own Hymn-book_, they are fairly numerous. To the first edition of his hymns he prefixed ‘a brief summary account of the great things’ God had ‘done for’ his ‘soul,’ which, but for its Calvinism, might have been written by one of the early Methodist preachers. Again and again this narrative recalls _Grace Abounding_, though Hart has little of the vigour, and none of the humour, of Bunyan. He was ‘born of believing parents,’ but after his conversion he ‘hasted to make myself a Christian by mere doctrine, adopting other men’s opinions before I had tried them.’ The result was, according to his own account, a deplorable fall into the prevalent Antinomianism, against which Fletcher and Wesley wrote so energetically. After seven or eight years ‘in this abominable state’ he ‘began by degrees to reform a little,’ and in the week before Easter, 1757, he had ‘an amazing view of the agony of Christ in the garden,’ which affected all his after life. ‘While these horrors remained’ he found occasional comfort at Whitefield’s Tabernacle in Moorfields, or his chapel in Tottenham Court Road, but on Whit Sunday (which was also Charles Wesley’s Day of Pentecost), at the Moravian chapel in Fetter Lane, under a sermon on Rev. iii. 10, he felt ‘deeply impressed,’ and hastening home found himself ‘melting away with a strange softness of affection.’ His experience was that of Christian at the Cross, his ‘burden’ under which he was ‘almost sinking’ was immediately taken from his shoulders. ‘Tears ran in streams from my eyes, and I was so swallowed up in joy and thankfulness that I hardly knew where I was.’ After this ‘reconversion’ he had many Bunyan-like temptations, but walked humbly with God, and ministered till his death to the Independent church in Jewin Street.

His hymns are said, in the ‘advertisement’ to the edition published after his death, to describe his preaching exactly, and they are evidently the fruit of his own experience.

The vicissitudes of a trembling faith, the alternations of comfort and depression, the ever-recurring conflict between grace and sin, and all the emotions of a soul ‘ready to halt,’ but knowing where to look for strength, are plentifully and feelingly represented. But he has little acquaintance either with the joyful hope and buoyant cheerfulness of Wesley or with the ‘quietness and confidence’ of Keble.[105]

He had a small poetic gift, and some of his hymns, with their happy alliterations, quaint phrases, easy rhythm, and, above all, their simple piety, have charm and power. Dr. Johnson’s estimate of Hart may be inferred from a curious incident. ‘I went to church. I gave a shilling; and, seeing a poor girl at the sacrament in a bed-gown, I gave her privately half a crown, though I saw Hart’s hymns in her hand.’

The hymns by which he is, and will be, known, are—

Come, Holy Spirit, come, Let Thy bright beams arise.

Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched,

And

This God is the God we adore.

Some of his forgotten verses have real epigrammatic force, e.g.—

If profit be thy scope, Diffuse thy alms about. The worldling prospers laying up, The Christian laying out.

A few other hymn-writers belong to the Dissenting Church of the eighteenth century, but they have passed or are passing from our modern hymn-books. Simon Browne (1680-1732), pastor of an Independent church in Old Jewry, published in 1720 a supplement to Watts, which shows how early Watts began to be regarded as the standard hymn-book in Congregational Churches. There is a pathetic interest in the strange affliction from which he suffered. In 1723 he was attacked by highwaymen, and defended himself with such vigour that his adversary, when he released him, was found to be dead. Browne was overwhelmed with grief, and sank into a state of melancholy which was deepened by family bereavement. ‘He imagined that God had in a gradual manner annihilated in him the thinking substance,’ yet he continued his ministry, and wrote many books, including an exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians in Matthew Henry’s _Commentary_. His best-known hymn is still to be found in many hymn-books.

Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove, My sinful maladies remove.

Its form is altered and improved, having passed through the hands of many editors.

He was also the author of a penitential hymn, which is much more impressive when given as Browne wrote it in the first person singular. In other respects editors have improved it by slight alterations.

Lord, at Thy feet a sinner lies, And knocks at mercy’s door; With heavy heart and downcast eyes Thy favour I implore.

On me the vast extent display Of Thy forgiving love; Take all my heinous guilt away, This heavy load remove.

Without Thy grace I sink opprest, Down to the gates of hell: O give my troubled spirit rest, And all my fears dispel.

’Tis mercy, mercy, I implore, I would Thy pity move, Thy grace is an exhaustless store And Thou Thyself art love.