considerations may help us to a more clear conception of the blessings which God, through this one man has conferred on this people and nation. 1. Dr. Watts was the first man in England who wrote hymns with the direct purpose of using them in Divine Service. Before his time, no evidence seems to exist that a hymn, properly so called,-"a mere human composition," as the phrase went, had ever been sung in any church or chapel in England. 2. This truly great man produced these hymns in the very darkest and deadest period of English Church history at a time which all historians look back upon with awe as the very darkest hour before the dawn. 3. These hymns were written before any of the works of the most correct poets were published, before the New Version of Psalms had come into use, when Pope was only nineteen years old, four years before the Spectator appeared, before Charles Wesley was born! Instead of being full of the imperfections, the carelessness, the solecisms now complained of, the book must have appeared at the time to be a specimen of chaste and pure and elevated composition, such as might in vain be sought for anywhere else, even among the best poets of the age. 4. There are more of these hymns, and more of them in proportion to the number originally written, in actual use than can be claimed for any hymn writer living or dead. The number of the poems is about 750; in one collection, "The New Congregational," 387 of them are found. 5. The field which Dr. Watts opened for himself in the year 1707 was occupied by himself exclusively for thirty, and with not more than one or two com petitors for forty, years; in fact, till his decease in 1748. The first hymn-book published by John Wesley (if he did publish it) was selected for the Moravian Chapel, Fetter Lane, in 1738. The first Wesleyan collection did not appear till 1753. 6. The confessed design of Dr. Watts to compose hymns to be sung in Divine Service was so startling an innovation, so presumptuous a thing in itself, so sure to meet with deadly hostility and scornful ridicule from friends and foes, that the calm and dignified way in which he set about it seems like the inspiration of true genius, almost the prescience of a seer. In his "Essay on Psalmody" he uses all the gentleness, the persuasiveness, and the reasonableness of which he was master, declaring at the same time that if the Church will not receive his compositions, he will be most thankful to give them for the comfort and blessing of those who will adopt them for private and devotional use. I shall feel that this very humble effort is well rewarded if I can obtain not only a more ample recognition of the services of this great champion of our devotional poetry, but if, also, I may put some check upon the very unjust, supercilious, flippant, boastful comments of modern critics, who, I fear, have but little sympathy with, and still less knowledge of, this very amiable and modest, but yet bold and successful, writer. In the collection of hymns I present those which are in use in the present day, not such as I or any individual might fancy, but those which, in spite of the thousands upon thousands of hymns which have been written since Watts' time, have kept their hold on the public esteem and are still loved and prized by those who use them. followed the order of the Christian year, which has now become familiar to everyone. In correcting them In arranging them I have I have removed obsolete words and words which have by accident lost their character, if we may so speak. I have corrected the more flagrant licences of rhyme and grammatical construction, at that time indulged in by the best poets, but not tolerated in our day. I have ventured to alter lines and even verses in some hymns, which, if not altered, would have banished them from the collection, the hymns themselves being far too good to be lost. I have striven above all things never to weaken the stanza by the correction, and never to use a word or phrase not used in other parts of the book. That there may be no misunderstanding on the subject, that no one may suppose a large number of Watts' Hymns are inadmissable without alterations, I submit the following explanations as to those printed in this book :: Hymns given as they were written Hymns given with unimportant alterations of 198 72 25 224 Hymns so far altered as to affect their character 7 ... 306 Of verses omitted I have taken no account. Watts presented all through the book a number of alternative verses enclosed within brackets, all of which he never expected would be sung. He says himself the hymn is complete without them. PREFACE. I. First Publication and Great Success of the HE occasion of Dr. Watts' Hymns was this : «The hymns which were sung at the dissenting meeting house at Southampton were so little to his taste, that he could not forbear complaining of them to his father. The father bade him try what he could do to mend the matter. He did, and had such success in his first essay, that a second hymn was earnestly desired of him, and then a third and a fourth, etc., until in process of time there was such a number of them as to make up a volume." (The Rev. John Morgan, in Milner's "Life of Watts." P. 255.) Watts resided at Southampton only two years and a half after he left college, from April, 1694, to October, 1696. He then removed to Stoke Newington, where he remained five years. If the above statement be correct, he began his career as a hymn writer when he was about 21 years of age. It is said that a large number of his hymns were written before he had preached his first sermon, which was on his 24th birthday. However that may be, it is quite certain that both his Lyric Poems and Hymns and Spiritual Songs were ready for publication in the year 1705, when he had attained his 31st year. He published his Lyric Poems in December in that year, with the idea of testing the public feeling, clearly not so much on the question of his own success as a poet, as to discover how far hymns (several of which were found in this volume), "mere human compositions," would be tolerated by his friends. The Poems were well received, and he now ventured on the bolder flight which he had most at heart,—the publication of his Hymns and Spiritual Songs. He prefixed to it "An Essay toward the Improvement of Psalmody," which is the best historical comment extant on the state of public feeling at that time among Churchmen and Dissenters on the question of the lawfulness of singing hymns in Divine Service. The number of hymns in this first edition is about 280. It was sold out in a year, and he found it necessary to re-edit the two books the Lyrics and the Hymns-in the same year. The task was not an easy one: he had invited criticism and advice from his friends; and critics, not friendly, had also written to him. Of all the hints which were given him, he made the best use he could. As he had conceived the idea of publishing his version of the Psalms at this time, he withdrew those that were already printed (about fifteen) in the first book: he added one hundred hymns and the whole of the third book to this volume. So weary was he of the task, that he finishes up by saying he hopes he may never have to write or correct another hymn as long as he lives.* The book is substantially the same as that we have now in use. The Psalms were published in 1719. In the interval the Hymns had reached the sixth edition. The completed work reached its fifteenth edition in * See Appendix, Note 1. |