“To whom, Lord, should I sing but Thee,
The Maker of my tongue?
Lo, other lords would seize on me,
But I to Thee belong.
As waters hasten to their sea,
And earth unto its earth,
So let my soul return to Thee,
From whom it had its birth.”
His influence on Watts was very considerable. George MacDonald says of Mason’s hymns: “Dr. Watts was very fond of them; would that he had written with similar modesty of style.” Mason was made to supply many a good line to the hymns of Watts, we are told by those who have compared the hymns of the two writers.[3]
The hymns are good, because the writer was good! Richard Baxter styled him “the glory of the Church of England,” saying that “the frame of his spirit was so heavenly, his deportment so humble and obliging, his discourse of spiritual things so weighty, with such apt words and delightful air, that it charmed all that had any spiritual relish.”