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.’