I.—The School of Watts

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:

A NEW SONG TO THE LAMB THAT WAS SLAIN

(Rev. v. 6, 8, 9-12.)

Behold the glories of the Lamb,

Amidst His Father’s throne:

Prepare new honours for His Name,

And songs before unknown.

Let elders worship at His feet,

The Church adore around,

With vials full of odours sweet,

And harps of sweeter sound.

Those are the prayers of the saints,

And these the hymns they raise:

Jesus is kind to our complaints,

He loves to hear our praise.

Eternal Father, who shall look

Into Thy secret will?

Who but the Son shall take that book

And open every seal?

He shall fulfil Thy great decrees,

The Son deserves it well;

Lo, in His hand the sovereign keys

Of heaven, and death, and hell.

Now to the Lamb that once was slain,

Be endless blessings paid;

Salvation, glory, joy remain

For ever on Thy head.

This is far from being one of Watts’s best hymns, but it is vastly better than Barton’s best.

It is characteristic of Dr. Watts that in the preface to his Psalms he speaks courteously of his predecessors in the attempt to adapt the Psalms to modern use. He praises Sir John Denham, Luke Milbourne, Tate and Brady, and, most of all, Dr. Patrick, whose ‘chief excellency,’ he thought, was that ‘he departed further from the inspired words of Scripture’ than others had done. Watts’s hymns were published ten or twelve years before the Psalms, and in his preface he delivers a vigorous apology for what he felt to be a bold venture, but pays no compliment to predecessors. He could not say, like John Wesley, that but a small part were of his own composing, yet even his extreme modesty does not prevent his showing a quiet and most just confidence in his work as compared with what had been hitherto available. His picture of the public worship of his day may comfort us in regard to the attractiveness of modern services. He says—

While we sing the praises of our God in His Church, we are employed in that part of worship which of all others is the nearest akin to heaven, and it is pity that this, of all others, should be performed the worst upon earth. The gospel brings us nearer to the heavenly state than all the former dispensations of God amongst men. And in these last days of the gospel we are brought almost within sight of the kingdom of our Lord; yet we are very much unacquainted with the songs of the New Jerusalem, and unpractised in the work of praise. To see the dull indifference, the negligent and the thoughtless air, that sits upon the faces of a whole assembly, while the psalm is on their lips, might tempt even a charitable observer to suspect the fervency of inward religion; and it is much to be feared that the minds of most of the worshippers are absent or unconcerned. Perhaps the modes of preaching, in the best churches, still want some degrees of reformation; nor are the methods of prayer so perfect as to stand in need of no correction or improvement. But of all our religious solemnities, psalmody is the most unhappily managed. That very action which should elevate us to the most delightful and divine sensations, doth not only flatten our devotion, but too often awakes our regret, and touches all the springs of uneasiness within us.

He goes on to protest that it was ‘far from’ his ‘thoughts to lay aside the book of Psalms in public worship,’ which ‘is the most noble, most devotional and divine collection of poesy.’ At the same time he says—

It must be acknowledged still that there are a thousand lines in it which were not made for a Church in our days to assume as its own. There are also many deficiencies of light and glory which our Lord Jesus and His apostles have supplied in the writings of the New Testament. And with this advantage I have composed these spiritual songs, which are now presented to the world. Nor is the attempt vain-glorious or presuming, for, in respect of clear evangelical knowledge, The least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than all the Jewish prophets.

Such a defence of Christian hymns is superfluous to-day, but it took many long years to convince the Churches that ‘When I survey the wondrous Cross’ was more suitable for use in Christian worship than Ps. cix.

When Watts’s victory was achieved it was only too complete. In the congregations of his own denomination it was counted almost an impiety to sing anything but his psalms and hymns. This extravagant and narrow loyalty to Watts naturally placed the Dissenting congregations at a great disadvantage—far greater than that which the Methodist societies suffered through the too exclusive use of Wesley’s hymns. The idea that one man can write the hymns of any Church or congregation is long since exploded; indeed, we go further, claiming that a good hymn belongs to Christendom. We do not ask what a man’s ‘denomination’ is before giving him a place in our hymn-books. Only the Romanists, and some of them faint-heartedly, now demand that the writer and the singer must belong to the same communion.

Watts has been at once unduly lauded and unduly depreciated. Keble spoke of him as ‘no poet,’ and this may be true of his ‘poems,’ but his greater hymns could only have been written by a poet of no mean order. Montgomery puts the case more justly when he calls Watts ‘one of the least of the poets of his country,’ but ‘the greatest name among hymn-writers.’[94] Professor Palgrave does Watts full justice—

His views as an Independent were modified and enlarged by his sweet, devout temper—may we not add, by his gift in poetry? And ‘every Christian Church,’ as Dr. Johnson finely remarked, ‘would rejoice to have adopted’ one so fervently devout, so faithful to his duty—we may add, so much more truly gifted by nature as a poet than common Fame has recognized. As with C. Wesley and other good men, fluency, want of taste and finish, the sacrifice, in a word, of art to direct usefulness, have probably lost them those honours in literature to which they were born. But they have their reward.[95]

The sacrifice of art to usefulness was much more deliberate in the case of Watts than of Wesley. Charles Wesley often wrote in haste, with the rush and glow of a present inspiration, with thoughts that must find expression, and which it was easier to utter in poetry than in prose. Watts designed his hymns for the service of the house of God, and had ever before him the dull man in the pew and the tiresome man in the singing gallery. ‘I have seldom,’ he explained, ‘permitted a stop in the middle of a line, and seldom left the end of a line without one; to comport with the unhappy mixture of reading and singing, which cannot presently be reformed.’ ‘The metaphors,’ he continues, ‘are generally sunk to the level of vulgar capacities. If the verse appears so gentle and flowing as to incur the censure of feebleness, I may honestly affirm that sometimes it cost me labour to make it so. Some of the beauties of poesy are neglected, and some wilfully defaced.’ Finally, he describes his work as ‘an attempt for the reformation of psalmody amongst the Churches.’ In estimating Watts’s contribution to the hymn-book of the modern Church, this service must be gratefully recognized. It may seem to us that he stooped too much ‘to the level of vulgar capacities,’ but in this he had to consider what men were able to bear; and we must remember that even those of his hymns which were to perish in the using had their share in preparing the way for the ‘nobler, sweeter song’ in which the Church praises her Lord to-day.

When the Independent Churches began to seek a wider range of choice than Watts could afford, they proceeded by way of supplement, as the Methodists did until 1903. Dr. Thomas Gibbons, Watts’s affectionate but ponderous biographer,[96] issued one in 1769, and others followed in fairly rapid succession, amongst their editors being George Burder, Dr. Bengo Collyer, and finally Josiah Conder, whose book was prepared in 1833 under the direction of the Congregational Union.[97] When at length the Congregationalists began to compile completely new books, Watts naturally still exercised a preponderating influence—as in the excellent Leeds Hymn-book of 1853. But each successive official or unofficial publication emanating from the Congregational Churches has been marked by a great reduction in the number of Watts’s hymns, so that the present Congregational Church Hymnal contains fewer hymns by Watts than were included by Dr. Martineau in his Hymns for the Church and Home. If we turn to the hymn-books of other Churches, the reduction in the number of hymns by Dr. Watts is even more striking; e.g. the Church Hymnary (Presbyterian) gives only nine, and Church Hymns only fourteen.

At present it would seem as though Dr. Watts were more honoured in the Methodist Churches than among his own people, the Methodist and the Primitive Methodist each giving a larger number of his pieces than either the Congregational or Baptist hymn-books. Probably the number of Watts’s hymns in common use will be further reduced. Some inferior compositions still hold their place. They are survivals of a time when the Church’s hymn-book was vastly poorer than it is to-day. But when the lowest point is touched, there must ever remain a number of imperishable hymns which will be sung in the Church of Christ as long as it is militant here on earth.

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.

O God of Bethel, by whose Hand

Thine Israel still is fed

Who thro’ this weary Pilgrimage

Hast all our Fathers led

To thee our humble Vows we raise

To thee address our Prayer,

And in thy kind and faithful Breast

Deposite all our Care

If thou thro’ each perplexing Path

Wilt be our constant Guide

If thou wilt daily Bread supply

And Raiment wilt provide

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

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.

Benjamin Beddome (1717-95) was for more than half a century a Baptist minister at Bourton-on-the-Water, refusing for the sake of his rustic flock the attractions of a call to more conspicuous pastorates. ‘I would rather honour God,’ he said, ‘in a station even much inferior to that in which He has placed me, than intrude myself into a higher without His direction.’ His hymns were written for his own congregation, and usually to suit his sermon for the day.

There is not much to choose amongst Beddome’s pious verses. The following lines are interesting since they may, perhaps, have suggested Montgomery’s well-known hymn:

Prayer is the breath of God in man,

Returning whence it came;

Love is the sacred fire within,

And prayer the rising flame.

It gives the burdened spirit ease,

And soothes the troubled breast;

Yields comfort to the mourning soul,

And to the weary rest.

When God inclines the heart to pray,

He hath an ear to hear;

To Him there’s music in a sigh,

And beauty in a tear.

To these clerical hymn-writers of the school of Watts must be added the name of Anne Steele (1716-78), daughter of William Steele, timber-merchant and Baptist minister at Broughton, Hants. Miss Steele is the first Englishwoman who takes a permanent place amongst hymn-writers. She has been called the Miss Havergal of the eighteenth century, and so far as popularity and piety are concerned the comparison is fair. She wrote under the name of ‘Theodosia,’ and her hymns were for a hundred years extensively used in Nonconformist worship, and several are to be found in Anglican hymnals.

Dr. Watts was her acknowledged model. She cries—

O for the animating fire

That tuned harmonious Watts’s lyre,

To sweet seraphic strains![106]

She was so modest and devout, suffered and sorrowed so much, that one is glad to know that some at least of her songs will take their place among the permanent treasures of Christian song. Her hymns are generally improved by the omission of some verses, and by slight changes; but Miss Steele is never guilty of the clumsy and offensive phrases which mar so many contemporary hymns. Her best-known hymns are ‘When I survey life’s varied scene,[107] and ‘Father of mercies, in Thy word.’

Here are a few verses from a hymn on the text, ‘Because I live, ye shall live also’ (John xiv. 19)—

If my immortal Saviour lives,

Then my immortal life is sure;

His word a firm foundation gives:

Here let me build and rest secure.

Here let my faith unshaken dwell:

Immovable the promise stands;

Not all the powers of earth or hell

Can e’er dissolve the sacred bands.

Here, O my soul, thy trust repose!

If Jesus is for ever mine.

Not death itself, that last of foes,

Shall break a union so divine.

Dr. John Ryland (1753-1825), one of the pioneers of the modern missionary revival, and a few others are still remembered as hymn-writers, but there is little distinctive about their poetry. Indeed one is compelled to admit that a very large portion of the hymns of the school of Watts are dull, formal, and prosaic. For the most part they were written to suit particular sermons, and the shades of the meeting-house are about them still. To many of them Montgomery’s criticism of Beddome applies: ‘His compositions are calculated to be far more useful than attractive.’

The ‘atmosphere’ was hardly likely to inspire enthusiasm. The long struggle between King and Parliament, Catholic and Protestant was stilled, the Toleration Act (1689) had given to orthodox Nonconformists a religious liberty unknown before, and, though there were occasional fears lest the old, bad conditions should be revived, their freedom became gradually larger and more thoroughly established. Watts and Doddridge represent the best side of the Nonconformity which settled down after ‘the glorious Revolution’ into sedate, intelligent, unaggressive, and highly respectable Churches, rejoicing devoutly, but without enthusiasm, in the right to worship God in their own sanctuaries, and to ‘sit under’ the ministry of their own pastors. ‘Then had the Churches rest, and walking in the comfort of the Holy Ghost were multiplied.’ The high character and sound scholarship of the leading Nonconformist ministers compelled the respect and won the esteem of their episcopalian neighbours, with whom they lived in pleasant relationships. It was just the time for a quiet reform in modes of worship, and it was in the years between the Toleration Act and the Methodist Revival that the hymn, already known but not yet loved, won its way to a sure and increasingly honourable place in the service of the sanctuary. Had the hymns been more original and aggressive in tone, they would not so readily have won the ear and heart of Independent congregations at the beginning of the eighteenth century.