TUNE—OLD HUNDRED.
Martin Madan's four-page anthem, “Denmark,” has some grand strains in it, but it is a tune of florid and difficult vocalization, and is now heard only in Old Folks' Concerts.
The Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D., was born at Southampton, Eng., in 1674. His father was a deacon of the Independent Church there, and though not an uncultured man himself, he is said to have had little patience with the incurable penchant of his boy for making rhymes and verses. We hear nothing of the lad's mother, but we can fancy her hand and spirit in the indulgence of his poetic tastes as well as in his religious training. The tradition handed down from Dr. Price, a colleague of Watts, relates that at the age of eighteen Isaac became so irritated at the crabbed and untuneful hymns sung at the Nonconformist meetings that he complained bitterly of them to his father. The deacon may have felt something 66 / 42 as Dr. Wayland did when a rather “fresh” student criticised the Proverbs, and hinted that making such things could not be “much of a job,” and the Doctor remarked, “Suppose you make a few.” Possibly there was the same gentle sarcasm in the reply of Deacon Watts to his son, “Make some yourself, then.”
Isaac was in just the mood to take his father at his word, and he retired and wrote the hymn—
Behold the glories of the Lamb.
There must have been a decent tune to carry it, for it pleased the worshippers greatly, when it was sung in meeting—and that was the beginning of Isaac Watts' career as a hymnist.
So far as scholarship was an advantage, the young writer must have been well equipped already, for as early as the entering of his fifth year he was learning Latin, and at nine learning Greek; at eleven, French; and at thirteen, Hebrew. From the day of his first success he continued to indite hymns for the home church, until by the end of his twenty-second year he had written one hundred and ten, and in the two following years a hundred and forty-four more, besides preparing himself for the ministry. No. 7 in the edition of the first one hundred and ten, was that royal jewel of all his lyric work—
When I survey the wondrous cross.
Isaac Watts was ordained pastor of an Independent Church in Mark Lane, London, 1702, but 67 / 43 repeated illness finally broke up his ministry, and he retired, an invalid, to the beautiful home of Sir Thomas Abney at Theobaldo, invited, as he supposed, to spend a week, but it was really to spend the rest of his life—thirty-six years.
Numbers of his hymns are cited as having biographical or reminiscent color. The stanza in—
When I can read my title clear,
—which reads in the original copy,—
Should earth against my soul engage
And hellish darts be hurled,
Then I can smile at Satan's rage
And face a frowning world,
—is said to have been an allusion to Voltaire and his attack upon the church, while the calm beauty of the harbor within view of his home is supposed to have been in his eye when he composed the last stanza,—
There shall I bathe my weary soul
In seas of heavenly rest,
And not a wave of trouble roll
Across my peaceful breast.
According to the record,—
What shall the dying sinner do?
—was one of his “pulpit hymns,” and followed a sermon preached from Rom. 1:16. Another,—
And is this life prolonged to you?
—after a sermon from I Cor. 3:22; and another,—
How vast a treasure we possess,
—enforced his text, “All things are yours.” The hymn,—
Not all the blood of beasts
On Jewish altars slain,
—was, as some say, suggested to the writer by a visit to the abattoir in Smithfield Market. The same hymn years afterwards, discovered, we are told, in a printed paper wrapped around a shop bundle, converted a Jewess, and influenced her to a life of Christian faith and sacrifice.
A young man, hardened by austere and minatory sermons, was melted, says Dr. Belcher, by simply reading,—
Show pity Lord, O Lord, forgive,
Let a repenting sinner live.
—and became partaker of a rich religious experience.
The summer scenery of Southampton, with its distant view of the Isle of Wight, was believed to have inspired the hymnist sitting at a parlor window and gazing across the river Itchen, to write the stanza—
Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand drest in living green;
So to the Jews old Canaan stood
While Jordan rolled between.
The hymn, “Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb,” was personal, addressed by Watts “to Lucius on the death of Seneca.”
A severe heart-trial was the occasion of another hymn. When a young man he proposed marriage 69 / 45 to Miss Elizabeth Singer, a much-admired young lady, talented, beautiful, and good. She rejected him—kindly but finally. The disappointment was bitter, and in the first shadow of it he wrote,—
How vain are all things here below,
How false and yet how fair.
Miss Singer became the celebrated Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe, the spiritual and poetic beauty of whose Meditations once made a devotional text-book for pious souls. Of Dr. Watts and his offer of his hand and heart, she always said, “I loved the jewel, but I did not admire the casket.” The poet suitor was undersized, in habitually delicate health—and not handsome.
But the good minister and scholar found noble employment to keep his mind from preying upon itself and shortening his days. During his long though afflicted leisure he versified the Psalms, wrote a treatise on Logic, an Introduction to the Study of Astronomy and Geography, and a work On the Improvement of the Mind; and died in 1748, at the age of seventy-four.