Oh the delights! the heavenly joys!
Or that,
Now to the Lord a noble song!
Watts, we have said, has suffered in many ways. No hymns, we will be bound to say, in our language have suffered so much from garbling and mangling; many of them have passed through a perfect martyrdom of maltreatment. Dr. Kennedy, of Shrewsbury, in his “Hymnologia Christiana,” will not admit “When I can read my title clear” to be a hymn, because it is gravely wrong in doctrine; and “There is a land of pure delight” is not admitted, because it is seriously faulty in style. But if an impartial reader should desire to sum up the great merits of Watts, it will perhaps be found that there is no doctrine of the great Christian creed and no great Christian emotion which does not find happy and frequently most faultless expression. His hymns of Praise to God, are frequently among the most noble in our language; for instance:
Sing to the Lord who built the skies,
The Lord that reared this stately frame;
Let all the nation sound His praise,
And lands unknown repeat His name.
He formed the seas, He formed the hills,
Made every drop, and every dust,