The greater sacred poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
spoke, for the most part, to themselves and to God; their hymns are of
the study and the oratory. But with the eighteenth century a new era
began. Its chief hymn-writers were ministers of religion, accustomed
to offer prayer and praise, not only for themselves, but for the
people. Their hymns were for the congregation and the religious
society. They were written with the distinct intention of providing
for common need; and in the Nonconformist Churches hymns supplied the
place of the rejected liturgy, enabling the congregation to unite in
praise and prayer.
The earlier centuries give us many rich devotional poems, few of which
are entirely suited to the public worship of our time. But we now
reach, what George Macdonald calls, ‘the zone of hymn-writing,’ and
are embarrassed by the plenteousness of the stores available for use
in the service of the sanctuary. Moreover, by this time modern English
has become fairly established, and there are few archaic expressions
to distract the unlearned.
Whatever may be said of the metrical Psalters, no one can doubt that
we are in an ampler, purer air when we listen to Isaac Watts
(1674-1748). Brighter days were dawning for the religious life of
England, and especially for the Nonconformists. Yet as a babe Isaac
Watts was nursed by his mother as she sat on a stone near the door of
the prison where his father was confined for conscience’ sake. But by
the time he was a man the sky had cleared, and there is little in his
hymns to recall the times of trouble except the version of Ps. lxxv.,
‘applied to the glorious revolution by King William or the happy
accession of King George to the throne,’ in which these verses occur—
Britain was doomed to be a slave;
Her frame dissolved, her fears were great,
When God a new supporter gave,
To hear the pillars of the State.
No vain pretence to royal birth,
Shall fix a tyrant on the throne;
God, the great Sovereign of the earth,
Will rise and make His justice known.
His own life was happy, and its story is singularly attractive. His
feeble health saved him from many a rough conflict, and called forth
the affectionate hospitality of Sir Thomas and Lady Abney. It was
seemly that the non-juring Bishop Ken should find a home with a peer
of the realm at Longleat, but Dr. Watts found an even more congenial
refuge at Theobalds and at Abney Park. There are few pleasanter
stories than that of Lady Huntingdon’s calling upon Dr. Watts, when he
said to her, ‘Madam, you have come to see me on a very remarkable day.
This day thirty years I came hither to the house of my good friend,
Sir Thomas, intending to spend but a week under his hospitable roof,
and I have extended my visit to thirty long years.’ ‘Sir,’ said his
gracious hostess, Lady Abney, ‘what you term a long thirty years’
visit, I consider as the shortest visit my family ever received.’
If the world had dealt a little less kindly with the poet, it might
have been all the better for his poetry, which lacks the vigour, the
martial music, the glorious enthusiasm of Luther and of Charles
Wesley. He was, it is true, not without at least one coarse and bitter
adversary—Thomas Bradbury, a Nonconformist minister of some fame and
more notoriety; who seems, without any special reason, to have
regarded Dr. Watts as a suitable mark for his vehement and vulgar
abuse. He sneeringly forbade ‘Watts’s _whims_’[93] to be sung in his
congregation, and charged the saintly poet with ‘burlesquing’ the
poetry of the most High God. He led, if he did not initiate, the
charge of Arianism. Had Watts been as ready for a theological fray as
John Wesley, or even John Fletcher, Bradbury would have had judgement
without mercy. But Watts’s letters in reply to these reiterated
accusations are models of Christian controversy, or rather of
Christian remonstrance. Their last encounter was at a meeting where
Watts’s feebleness made it difficult for him to make himself heard.
‘Shall I speak for you, Brother Watts?’ asked Bradbury. ‘Well, you
have often spoken _against_ me,’ was the gently sarcastic reply.
Bradbury’s malice can have done Watts little real harm, except that of
establishing the suspicion in a good many minds that he leaned to
Unitarianism—a charge which has been repeated to our own day. The mild
and colourless character of many of Watts’s hymns made them favourites
with Unitarian editors of a former time; but the author of
Not all the blood of beasts
On Jewish altars slain,
and of
When I survey the wondrous Cross,
is not to be claimed as Arian, Unitarian, or anything other than an
evangelical believer.
Our concern is with Watts as a hymn-writer rather than as a
theologian. He was the first man, able to write good hymns, who set
himself seriously to secure freedom in worship. In the meeting-house
at Southampton he wearied of the dull and halting verse of Barton, and
was not slow to accept his father’s challenge to write something
better. If tradition may be relied on, his first hymn, written during
the week and sung on the following Sunday, was that which he placed
first in his _Hymns and Spiritual Songs_, with the title: