The glories of Immanuel.
But, indeed, the sum of the matter is that the theology—the evangelical theology of Watts’ hymns—is the chief reason of the exception taken to the poetry. He is in a very eminent sense the poet of the Atonement; he saw the infinite meanings in that great expression “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” We have heard some quote and speak of what they have called that dreadful verse!—
Blood hath a voice to pierce the skies,
Revenge the blood of Abel cries;
But the dear stream, when Christ was slain,
Speaks peace as loud from every vein!
He saw infinite attributes in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, God manifested in the flesh, and he saw infinite consequences involved in the sacrifice of Christ. It was all to him “the wisdom of God in a mystery,” it was all the great power of God. Thus we have called him the evangelical poet, the poet of the Atonement. Hence those who have a distaste for his doctrine will dislike his verse.
It was the nature of Watts’ theology that it entered more into the heavenly places, the timeless, and the unconditioned purposes of the Infinite and Eternal Mind. He was a student, a real and a hard student, and the speculations of his intellect whenever he betook himself to verse, presented themselves to his mind suffused in the glowing but ineffable lights of eternity; he seemed to be fond of revolving eternal truths. We hope not to be misunderstood if we speak of him as a mystic. Although in his prose writings so little of the mystic appears, in his hymns he is perpetually moving amidst the adumbrations of uncreated mind. What an illustration of this is in that extraordinary hymn,
Lord we are blind, we mortals blind.
Much of the mystic spirit which pervades his verse is perceptible in the fine paradox in the following expressions of the last verse: