Isaac Watts; his life and writings, his homes and friends

by Edwin Paxton Hood

THE SKELETON.

“Young Tramarinus was just returned from his travels abroad, when he invited his uncle to his lodgings on a Saturday noon. His uncle was a substantial trader in the City, a man of sincere goodness, and of no contemptible understanding; Crato was his name. The nephew first entertained him with learned talk of his travels. The conversation happening to fall upon anatomy, and speaking of the hand, he mentioned the carpus and the metacarpus, the joining of the bones by many hard names, and the periosteum which covered them, together with other Greek words, which Crato had never heard of. Then he showed him a few curiosities he had collected; but anatomy being the subject of their chief discourse, he dwelt much upon the skeletons of a hare and a partridge. ‘Observe, sir,’ said he, ‘how firm the joints! how nicely the parts are fitted to each other! how proper this limb for flight, and that for running; and how wonderful the whole composition!’ Crato took due notice of the most considerable parts of those animals, and observed the chief remarks his nephew made; but being detained there two hours without a dinner, assuming a pleasant air, he said, ‘I wish these rarities had flesh upon them, for I begin to be hungry, nephew, and you entertain me with nothing but bones.’ Then he carried home his nephew to dinner with him, and dismissed the jest.

“The next morning his kinsman Tramarinus desired him to hear a sermon at such a church, ‘For I am informed,’ said he, ‘the preacher will be my old schoolmaster.’ It was Agrotes, a country minister, who was to fulfil the service of the day; an honest, a pious, and a useful man, who fed his own people weekly with Divine food, composed his sermons with a mixture of the instructive and the pathetic, and delivered them with no improper elocution. Where any difficulty appeared in the text or the subject, he usually explained it in a very natural and easy manner, to the understanding of all his parishioners. He paraphrased on the most affecting parts largely, that he might strike the conscience of every hearer, and had been the happy means of the salvation of many; but he thought thus with himself, ‘When I preach at London I have hearers of a wiser rank, I must feed them with learning and substantial sense, and must have my discourse set thick with distinct sentences and new matter.’ He contrived, therefore, to abridge his composures, and to throw four of his country sermons together to make up one for the City, and yet he could not forbear to add a little Greek in the beginning. He told the auditors how the text was to be explained; he set forth the analysis of the words in order, showed the hoti and the dioti—that is, that it was so, and why it was so—with much learned criticism—all of which he wisely left out in the country; then he pronounced the doctrine distinctly, and filled up the rest of the hour with the mere rehearsal of the general and special heads; but he omitted all the amplification which made his performances in the country so clear and so intelligible, so warm and affecting. In short, it was the mere joints and carcase of a long composure, and contained above forty branches in it. The hearers had no time to consider or reflect on the good things which were spoken, or apply them to their own consciences; the preacher hurried their attention so fast onward to new matters that they could make no use of anything he said while he spoke it, nor had they a moment for reflection, in order to fix it in their memories and improve by it at home.

“The young gentleman was somewhat out of countenance when the sermon was done, for he missed all that life and spirit, that pathetic amplification, which impressed his conscience when he was but a school-boy. However, he put the best face upon it, and began to commend the performance. ‘Was it not,’ said he, ‘sir, a substantial discourse? How well connected all the reasons! How strong all the inferences, and what a variety and number of them!’ ‘It is true,’ said the uncle, ‘but yet methinks I want food here, and I find nothing but bones again. I could not have thought, nephew, you would have treated me two days together just alike; yesterday at home, and to-day at church, the first course was Greek, and all the rest mere skeleton.’”

GOD IN VEGETATION.

“Let us first consider this as it relates to the vegetable part of the creation. What a profusion of beauty and fragrancy, of shapes and colours, of smells and tastes, is scattered among the herbs and flowers of the ground, among the shrubs, the trees, and the fruits of the field! Colouring in its original glory and perfection triumphs here; red, yellow, green, blue, purple, with vastly more diversities than the rainbow ever knew, or the prism can represent, are distributed among the flowers and the blossoms. And what variety of tastes, both original and compounded, of sweet, bitter, sharp, with a thousand nameless flavours, are found among the herbs of the garden! What an amazing difference of shapes and sizes appears among the trees of the field and forest in their branches and their leaves! and what a luxurious and elegant distinction in their several fruits! How very numerous are their distinct properties in their uses in human life! And yet these two common elements, earth and water, are the only materials out of which they are all composed, from the beginning to the end of nature and time. Let the gardener dress for himself one field of fresh earth, and make it as uniform as he can; then let him plant therein all the varieties of the vegetable world, in their roots or in their seeds, as he shall think most proper; yet out of this common earth, under the droppings of common water from heaven, every one of these plants shall be nourished, and grow up in their proper forms; all the infinity, diversity of shapes and sizes, colours, tastes, and smells, which constitute and adorn the vegetable world, would the climate permit, might be produced out of the same clods. What rich and surprising wisdom appears in that Almighty Operator, who out of the same matter shall perfume the bosom of the rose, and give the garlic its offensive and nauseous powers; who from the same spot of ground shall raise the liquorice and the wormwood, and dress the cheek of the tulip in all its glowing beauties! What a surprise, to see the same field furnish the pomegranate and the orange tree, with their juicy fruit, and the stacks of corn with their dry and husky grains; to observe the oak raised from a little acorn into its stately growth and solid timber; and that pillars for the support of future temples and palaces should spring out of the same bed of earth that sent up the vine with such soft and feeble limbs as are unable to support themselves! What a natural kind of prodigy it is, that chilling and burning vegetables should arise out of the same spot; that the fever and frenzy should start up from the same bed where the palsy and the lethargy lie dormant in their seeds! Is it not exceeding strange that healthful and poisonous juices should rise up, in their proper plants, out of the same common glebe, and that life and death should grow and thrive within an inch of each other? What wondrous and inimitable skill must be attributed to that Supreme Power, that First Cause, who can so infinitely diversify effects, where the servile second cause is so uniform and always the same! It is not for me in this place to enter into a long detail of philosophy, and show how the minute fibres and tubes of the different seeds and roots of vegetables take hold of, attract, and receive the little particles of earth and water proper for their own growth; how they form them at first into their own shapes, sending them up aspiring above ground by degrees, and mould them so as frame the stalks, the branches, the leaves, and the buds of every flower, herb, and tree. But I presume the world is too weary of substantial forms, and plastic powers, and names without ideas, to be persuaded that these mere creatures of fancy should ever be the operators in this wondrous work. It is much more honourable to attribute all to the design and long forethought of God the Creator, who formed the first vegetables in such a manner, and appointed their little parts to ferment under the warm sunbeams, according to such established laws of motion as to mould the atoms of earth and water which were near them in their own figure, to make them grow up into trunk and branches, which every night should harden into firmness and stability; and, again, to mould new atoms of the same element into leaves and bloom, fruit and seed, which last, being dropped into the earth, should produce new plants of the same likeness to the end of the world.”

FOOD.

“If the food of which one single animal partakes be never so various and different, yet the same laws of motion which God has ordained in the animal world, convert them all to the same purposes of nourishment for that creature. Behold the little bee gathering its honey from a thousand flowers, and laying up the precious store for its winter food. Mark how the crow preys upon a carcase, anon it crops a cherry from the tree; and both are changed into the flesh and feathers of a crow. Observe the kine in the meadows feeding on a hundred varieties of herbs and flowers, yet all the different parts of their bodies are nourished thereby in a proper manner: every flower in the field is made use of to increase the flesh of the heifer, and to make beef for men; and out of all these varieties there is a noble milky juice flowing to the udder, which provides nourishment for young children. So near akin is man, the lord of the creation, in respect of his body, to the brutes that are his slaves, that the very same food will compose the flesh of both of them, and make them grow up to their appointed stature. This is evident beyond doubt in daily and everlasting experiments. The same bread-corn which we eat at our tables will give rich support to sparrows and pigeons, to the turkey and the duck, and all the fowls of the yard: the mouse steals it and feeds on it in its dark retirement; while the hog in the sty, and the horse in the manger, would be glad to partake. When the poor cottager has nursed up a couple of geese, the fox seizes one of them for the support of her cubs, and perhaps the table of the landlord is furnished with the other to regale his friends. Nor is it an uncommon thing to see the favourite lap-dog fed out of the same bowl of milk which is prepared for the heir of a wealthy family, but which nature had originally designed to nourish a calf. The same milky material will make calves, lap-dogs, and human bodies.”

CHRIST AS A SUN.