Here, Lord, I give myself away—
’Tis all that I can do.”
The list of the great hymns that have come down to us from Isaac Watts is too long to be given here, but they enrich the pages of all our hymnals and exalt the spirit of all our church services.
The criticism often urged that Watts wrote too much cannot well be gainsaid, but the striking fact confronts us that most of the great hymns were written by men who wrote too much! The same is true of the composers of our greatest music, as, for instance, Mendelssohn and Handel. Much writing develops technic, ease, spontaneity, unselfconsciousness, that make the heights of feeling and expression more accessible. But what Watts needed was not so much to write less, but to have a competent editor like John Wesley to eliminate his vulgar and often grotesque lines.
That Watts should find plenty of antagonists to pick up the gauge of challenge he threw out was inevitable. His hymns were called “Watts’ Whims” in sardonic derision. It is noteworthy that the opposition did not prove so heated against his hymns as against his The Psalms of David Imitated (1719). In daring to amend the Judaism of David he had committed sacrilege! This volume practically closed his work of reforming the service of song in the English language. He was but forty-four years old at this time and he lived thirty years more—spent in theological, educational, and devotional writings.
The hymns of Watts slowly found their way among the Nonconformist churches. Before his death a large part of the Presbyterian and Congregational churches were nearly monopolized by them. However, the Established Church still clung to the Psalm Versions.
VII. CONTEMPORARIES OF WATTS
A contemporary of Watts, Simon Browne (1680-1732) issued a collection of hymns in 1720, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, designed as a supplement to Dr. Watts, containing one hundred and sixty-six hymns which had considerable vogue during the next generation. Now only one hymn, “Come, gracious Spirit, heavenly Dove,” survives in some of our hymnals.
Another contemporary was John Byrom (1691-1763), scientist and mystic, whose “Christians, awake, salute the happy morn” is still a Christmas favorite and whose “My spirit longeth for Thee” is “terse and tender in a very high degree.”[2] MacDonald speaks of his few hymns as a “well of the water of life, for its song tells of the love and truth which are the grand power of God.”
Another hymn writer of Watts’ day was Robert Seagrave (1693-?), who added fifty of his own hymns to a collection prepared for his own church at Lorimer’s Hall, Cripplegate, London, all of which had a high degree of excellence, of which “Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings” is found in most of our current hymnbooks.