Attend, O earth, His sovereign word;
Restore thy trust—a glorious form
Called to ascend and meet the Lord.
A judicious and compendious arrangement in order of the hymns of Watts, would thus show that every form of expression apparently necessary for public service finds some adequate representation: worship, confession, prayer, expression of faith; and those churches which for nearly a century had no other volume to assist them in their public devotions, do not deserve so much pity as has very frequently been expressed for them. Soon after their publication they came to be used outside of the communion for which they were designed. Ralph Erskine, of Dunfermline, drew a great number of the verses into his most remarkable volumes of divine drollery, sometimes in a most remarkable manner debasing the metre. Should the reader care to see an instance of this he may find it in “Scripture Songs,” Book III., Song III.; but there are many other instances.
Admirers of Wesley are fond of citing against Watts the well-known saying attributed to him, that he would have given all he had written for the credit of being the author of Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Come, O thou Traveller unknown.” It has been truly said, his excessive modesty often gloomed his greatness; Gibbons makes some such remark; it, at any rate, kept all power and disposition to self-assertion in the shade; but it is no reason why his admirers now should imitate, with reference to himself, that virtue, and be indifferent to his great powers as a sacred poet.
No hymn-writer has suffered so much from mutilation as Watts. Sometimes the attempts at improvement have been ludicrous. We remember a specimen of many:
The little ants, for one poor grain
Exert themselves and strive.
Instead of—
Labour and tug and strive.