Chapter VII: Hymns (2)

Thou art the sea of love
Where all my pleasures roll,
The circle where my passions move,
And centre of my soul.

To Thee my spirits fly
With infinite desire,
And yet how far from Thee I lie!
Dear Jesus, raise me higher.

I cannot bear Thy absence, Lord,
My life expires if Thou depart;
Be thou, my heart, still near my God,
And Thou, my God, be near my heart.

Such are the streams of devotion on which we are borne in the verses of Watts.

Some of his hymns are like _collects_, the compact, comforting little _watchwords and creeds of the Church_—

Firm as the earth Thy Gospel stands.

Or—

Our God, how firm His promise stands.

Sometimes we have a fine _bold trumpet-like tone of Faith_:

Begin, my tongue, some heavenly theme,
And speak some boundless thing;
The mighty works, or mightier name
Of our eternal King.

His very word of grace is strong
As that which built the skies;
The Voice that rolls the stars along
Speaks all the promises.

He said, “Let the wide heaven be spread,”
And heaven was stretched abroad:
“Abra’m, I’ll be thy God,” He said,
And He _was_ Abra’m’s God.

How well he has expressed the _depths of contrition_ in his version of the 51st Psalm, what plaintive compassion—

O Thou that hear’st when sinners cry!

And equally well he has depicted the _happiness_ and _serenity_ of “a heart sprinkled from an evil conscience:”

O happy soul that lives on high!

Or—

Lord, how secure and blest are they
Who feel the joys of pardoned sin.

Then how vigorously his notes rouse and stir to the activities of the _Christian life_:

Are we the soldiers of the cross,
The followers of the Lamb?

Or—

Stand up, my soul, shake off thy fears!

The _patriotic lyrics_ and hymns of Watts have sounded, how in his day they throbbed, with that pulse of prayer for our country:

Shine, mighty God! on Britain shine
With beams of heavenly grace;
Reveal Thy power through all our coasts,
And show Thy smiling face.

Amidst our isle, exalted high,
Do Thou our glory stand;
And, like a wall of guardian fire,
Surround the favoured land.

And when the Americans held their great “Thanksgiving Day,” Watts’ hymn, always sung to the venerable old tune of St. Martin’s, was, as Mrs. Stowe tells us, the national hymn of the Puritans.[22]

Let children hear the mighty deeds
Which God performed of old,
Which in our younger years we saw,
And which our fathers told.

Our lips shall tell them to our sons,
And they again to theirs,
That generations yet unborn
May teach them to their heirs.

The extent to which the verses of Watts entered into all the incidents of the social life of the United States is well illustrated in the “Pearl of Orr’s Island:” in a very striking and pathetic manner the following stanzas often interlace the conversations of that charming story:

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.

Under the shadow of Thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure:
Sufficient is Thine arm alone,
And our defence is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting Thou art God,
To endless years the same.

Thy word commands our flesh to dust—
“Return, ye sons of men;”
All nations rose from earth at first,
And turn to earth again.

A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.

The busy tribes of flesh and blood,
With all their lives and cares,
Are carried downwards by the flood,
And lost in following years.

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.

Like flowery fields the nations stand,
Pleased with the morning light;
The flowers beneath the mower’s hand
Lie withering ere ’tis night.

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.

And we are reminded that this grand hymn, which we have heard sung in barns and meeting-houses, in kirks and cathedrals, also comes with tender pathos in one of the affecting scenes of Charlotte Brontë.

What grand expressions of _personal faith_ abound among these verses, what a radiant casting back of the blunted arrows of doubt and unbelief!

Questions and doubts are heard no more;
Let Christ and joy be all our theme;
His Spirit seals His Gospel sure,
To every soul that trusts in Him.

Learning and wit may cease their strife,
When miracles with glory shine;
The Voice that calls the dead to life
Must be almighty and Divine.

What faith in the _Saviour’s glorious resurrection and second advent_!—

With joy we tell this scoffing age,
He that was dead hath left His tomb;
He lives above their utmost rage,
And we are waiting till He come.

_Sabbath songs_, songs for the social service at the close of the day, songs for every variety of Christian ordinance, songs especially for the Lord’s Supper, songs of grief as the soul realises the death of the Redeemer, songs of rapture as the salvation becomes apprehensible—

Salvation! O the joyful sound!

Or—

Plunged in a gulf of dark despair.

The first _Elegies_ in our language are among Watts’ hymns. When early manhood has been smitten down in its green prime, how finely swells aloft that grand elegy with its triumphant close, the paraphrase of the text, “He weakened my strength in the way. He shortened my days:”

It is the Lord our Saviour’s hand
Weakens our strength amidst the race:
Disease and death at His command
Arrest us and cut short our days.

Spare us, O Lord, aloud we pray,
Nor let our sun go down at noon;
Thy years are one eternal day,
And must Thy children die so soon?

Yet in the midst of death and grief,
This thought our sorrow shall assuage,
“Our Father and our Saviour live;
Christ is the same through every age.”

Before Thy face Thy church shall live,
And on Thy throne Thy children reign:
This dying world shall they survive,
And the dead saints be raised again.

And when some form more than ordinarily venerable or beautiful, holy or beloved, has been lowered into its resting-place, while they laid wreaths of camellias and evergreens on the coffin, uprose that wonderful elegy:

Hear what the Voice from heaven proclaims
For all the pious dead!
Sweet is the savour of their names,
And soft their sleeping bed.

And how often, in similar circumstances, that other sweet requiem:

Why do we mourn departing friends?

Amidst trembling prayers, in the darkened room, in the presence of some sweet shrouded and coffined form, the memory of some soft sealed face and folded hands, and spirit for ever at rest, has rose the hymn into pensive rapture:

Are we not tending upward too,
As fast as time can move?
Nor would we wish the hours more slow
To keep us from our love.

Contrasting the evanescence of man, not merely with the eternity of God, but with the eternity of Christ, and the promised prevalence of His salvation everywhere, who has not seen large meetings leap into hearty fervour at the announcement of that noble prophecy:

Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
Does his successive journeys run.

Who has more triumphantly followed the spirit of the believer into its glorious home and rest? Watts had a singularly bold and majestic manner in striking in the very first words of a hymn the key-note of the whole piece; indeed there was usually a singular fitness and force in the first line.

Give me the wings of faith to rise
Within the veil, and see
The saints above; how great their joys,
How vast their glories be!

Some critics have objected to what seems to us the sweet natural pathos of that verse:

How we should scorn the clothes of flesh,
These fetters and this load,
And long for evening to undress,
That we may rest with God.

Or that fine piece:

Absent from flesh! O blissful thought!

And the following verses, not so often quoted, or so well known:

And is this heaven? and am I there?
How short the road! how swift the flight!
I am all life, all eye, all ear;
Jesus is here my soul’s delight.

Is this, the heavenly Friend who hung
In blood and anguish on the tree,
Whom Paul proclaimed and David sung,
Who died for them, who died for me?

Creator-God, eternal light,
Fountain of good, tremendous power,
Oceans of wonders, blissful sight!
Beauty and love unknown before.

Thy grace, Thy nature, all unknown
In yon dark region whence I came,
Where languid glimpses from Thy throne
And feeble whispers teach Thy name.

I’m in a world where all is new,
Myself, my God; O blest amaze!
Not my best hopes or wishes knew
To form a shadow of His grace.

Fixed on my God, my heart, adore;
My restless thoughts, forbear to rove;
Ye meaner passions, stir no more;
But all my powers be joy and love.

And one of the most touching of his funeral pieces is that magnificent funeral march for some departed saint, and worthy of the grand air to which it has often been sung—Handel’s Dead March in “Saul:”

Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb!
Take this new treasure to thy trust,
And give these sacred relics room
Awhile to slumber in the dust.

Nor pain, nor grief, nor anxious fear
Invade thy bounds: no mortal woes
Can reach the forms which slumber here,
And angels watch their soft repose.

So Jesus slept! God’s dying Son
Passed through the grave and blessed the bed:
Rest here, dear saint, till from His throne
The morning break and pierce the shade!

Break from His throne, illustrious morn!
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.

But such emendations are innocent when compared with those in which the entire doctrine of the hymn has been expelled.[23] Lord Selborne (Sir Roundell Palmer) has said, “Watts altered some of Charles Wesley’s hymns, much to his brother John’s discontent, as he testifies in the preface to his Hymn Book.” We have very little hesitation in assuring his lordship that he is mistaken, and that he will find no instance in which Watts altered, however slightly, Wesley’s hymns. In two or three instances he altered and appropriated from Tate and Brady and Patrick, and acknowledged the extent of his alterations in notes, a courtesy never extended to himself.

Before Jehovah’s awful throne,

is Watts altered, and admirably altered, by two words in the first line, but the entire hymn was appropriated; but indeed it was impossible that Watts could alter Wesley. Watts’ work was all done, and had long been done, before Wesley appeared. Literary plagiarism we believe to be a much less common sin than many suppose. Minds on the same plane of thought and feeling are likely to discover the same images, and to indulge in the same expressions. Certainly Mr. Milner, in his “Life of Watts,” is wrong when he says (page 276) that Watts’ well-known lines:

The opening heavens around me shine
With beams of sacred bliss,

were probably suggested to Watts by Gray’s—

The meanest flow’ret of the vale,
The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are opening paradise.

Watts’ lines were published nine years before Gray was born!

Comparing the two great hymn-writers, Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley, an adequate sense may be arrived at, if the very important distinctions are noticed between the work proposed in the verses of the two admirable men. It is our conviction that while Watts has, in the stricter term of the word poet, included in himself Charles Wesley, the purpose of Wesley’s verse was especially to describe frames, feelings, and experiences, to set these to a sweet strain of popular melody, such as might rouse the thousands for whom they were intended. Nothing is more remarkable than the contrasted sense Watts and the Wesleys entertained of their performances. The preface published to the Wesleyan Hymn Book, in 1779, is one of the most extravagant efforts of conceit in our language; it is somewhat wonderful that the good taste of the Wesleyan Conference does not omit it from the editions now in the course of circulation. “Here,” it says, “is no doggerel, no botches, nothing put in to patch up the rhyme, no feeble expletives; here is nothing tinged or bombast, or low and creeping; here are no cant expressions, no words without meaning; those who impute this to us know not what they say.” “Here are,” it continues, “the purity, elegance, and strength of the English language, and the utmost simplicity and plainness suited to every capacity.” It goes on to assert that “in the following hymns is to be found the true spirit of poetry, such as cannot be acquired by art or labour, but must be the gift of nature. By labour a man may become a tolerable imitation of Spenser, Shakespeare, or Milton, and may heap together pretty compound epithets, such as pale-eyed, meek-eyed, and the like; but unless he be born a poet he will never attain to the genuine spirit of poetry.” How remarkably all this is in contrast to the spirit of the writer whose hymns had been before the world nearly half a century before this first collected edition of the Wesleys’ hymns was published. John Wesley included many of Watts’ hymns in his own hymn book, but their authorship was not acknowledged; and many others were vigorous translations from the German of Zinzendorf, Paul Gerhardt, etc.; Watts’ hymn book was entirely and wholly his own.

It is ungracious work to bring into the rivalry of comparison or contrast two singers who have so sacredly served the Church. Yet we will dare to say it here, in the hymns of Watts there is that peculiar accent, that note of pain, that majesty and melody of the deep minor chord—that sounding of a deeper experience—that ineffable something which testifies to a capacity of agony, as well as to the assurance of ecstasy which is the true poet’s prerogative and power. We would even say the very test of Watts’ genius and experience is that many of his pieces, and some of his very highest, are unfitted for more than the select experience. Wesley’s are more easy, common-place, and popular. The hymns of Watts, however, will stand a far higher test than that of the suffrages of large congregations or ecclesiastical communities—the sighs of the sick-room, the death-bed, the bereaved chamber, the private closet of heart devotion. With these verses on their lips refreshing their hearts, how many pilgrims have approached the

Land of pure delight
Where saints immortal reign.

Most of what has gone before applies to the hymns; but some especial reference should be made to the version of the Psalms. Palmer, in his “Life of Watts,” says, “This is generally allowed to be his capital production in poetry, with which, in point of utility, none of his other pieces will bear comparison.” From this verdict there will be many dissentients. It is certainly true that in some of the pieces he rises to the highest rendering of the evangelical sense of the Psalter. His object was to interpret the Psalms of Christ; it is not therefore very remarkable that when a young minister inquired of an elder which was the best commentary on the Psalms, he replied, “Watts’ version of them.” This judgment was not so singular as it seems.

Watts’ may be called the Messianic version of the Psalms; he felt that without this construction they must be very greatly inexplicable. The unfolding this idea popularly was an immense boon to the churches. We are to remember that the Book of Psalms was the great Hebrew Psalter; it was the Book of Common Prayer and Praise, and when the Christian Church arose, it still continued the use of these divine airs for the expression of its experiences and its faith. Jerome says: “The labourer, while he holds the handle of the plough, sings Alleluia, the tired reaper employs himself on the Psalms, and the vine-dresser, while lopping the vines with his curved hook, sings something out of David; these are our ballads in this part of the world; these, to use the common expression, are our love songs.” Chrysostom has a noble panegyric upon the use of the Psalms in the service of the Church. “If we keep vigil in the Church, David comes first, last, and midst. If early in the morning, David is first, last, and midst.” Again, he goes on to declare how, “in the funeral solemnities for the dead, or when the girl sits at home spinning, and not in cities alone, and not alone in churches, but in the forum and in the wilderness, and even in the uninhabitable desert, David excites to the praises of God.” And this has continued true ever since.

The case being so, why was it that, alike in Hebrew and in Christian days, the Book of Psalms has had such a sovereign power over holy souls? The personality of David has even obscured the higher personality and the Messianic symmetry; it is forgotten that in the Hebrew language David signifies the beloved, the darling, the chosen one, and that many of the Psalms, regarded as personal to him, are rather to be apprehended in the _same manner_ in which his name occurs in Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in which we have “the key of David,” “David, a leader and commander to the people,” in “the sure mercies of David,” terms the fulness of which is lost sight of by their being associated with the Hebrew prince, rather than with Him who is the infinitely beloved of God and man. Thus in numerous Psalms to which the prefix is given, “A Psalm of, or by, David,” a stricter reading would be, “A Psalm to, or for, David;” in some instances this sense comes out with great force, and thus they illustrate that text in Ezekiel, penned hundreds of years after David’s death, “I will set one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David (_i.e._ the Beloved). He shall feed them and be their shepherd.” What a different fulness of meaning is given to such innumerable passages as those in the 123rd Psalm, “For thy servant David’s sake turn not away the face of thine anointed;” “The Lord hath sworn unto David, Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne:” if we substitute the Beloved one for David in many such passages, and what a rich meaning is unfolded! David was perhaps the author of all these; but in that wonderful spirit of the Hebrew playing upon words, just as he rose from his own occupation to exclaim, “The Lord is my shepherd,” so he rose from his own name, transforming it into a Divine synonym, searching for its origin and filling it out with divine and elevated ideas.[24] This was the spirit in which Watts in his version restored the Psalms to Christ, and removed them from the lower and more contracted circle of human personality to the suffering and reigning Messiah. Most readers were thankful for the noble restoration of the evangelical regalia to their rightful owner; and only here and there one or two, like the indecent and insolent Bradbury, took exception to the performance as “robbing them of their book of Praise,” as that rash and vehement man, referring to the version of Watts, said, “David is no longer suffered to be our Psalmist.”

This, then, is the spirit in which Watts translated the Psalms, to the Christian sense preserving, as we have said, the Messianic idea throughout, as in that stirring call to Christian service:

Arise, O King of Grace, arise
And enter to Thy rest!
Lo! Thy church waits with longing eyes
Thus to be owned and blest.

Enter with all Thy glorious train,
Thy Spirit and Thy word;
All that the Ark did once contain
Could not such grace afford.

The aim of Watts in his Book of Psalms was to translate the Old Testament phraseology into a New Testament language and experience. James Hamilton has illustrated this by an anecdote which it can scarcely be impertinent to quote here; he says: “I cannot tell it accurately, but I have heard of a godly couple whose child was sick and at the point of death. It was unusual to pray together except at the hours of ‘exercise;’ however, in her distress, the mother prevailed on her husband to kneel down at the bedside and offer a word of prayer. The good man’s prayers were chiefly taken from the best of liturgies, the book of Psalms; and after a long and reverential introduction from the 90th and elsewhere, he proceeded, ‘Lord, turn again the captivity of Zion; then shall our mouth be filled with laughter and our tongue with singing.’ And as he was proceeding, ‘turn again our captivity,’ the poor agonized mother interrupted him: ‘Eh, man, you are aye drawn out for thae Jews, but it’s our bairn that’s deein’,’ at the same time clasping her hands and crying, ‘Lord, help us; oh, give us back our darling, if it be Thy holy will; and if he is to be taken, oh take him to Thyself!’ And fond as I am,” continues James Hamilton, “of scriptural phrases in prayer, I am fonder still of reality. It is a striking fact that the prayers addressed to Christ in the Gospels are hardly one of them in Old Testament language; just as New Testament songs embed in a language of their own Old Testament phrases;” and, as we may add, just as the woman and her husband had the same purpose in their prayers.

And it is in this way Watts seems to apologize for his attempts when he says, in his introduction to his version of the Psalms:

HEBREW MELODIES CHRISTIANIZED.

“But since I believe that any Divine sentence, or Christian
verse, agreeable to Scripture, may be sung, though it be
composed by men uninspired, I have not been so curious and
exact in striving everywhere to express the ancient sense and
meaning of David, but have rather expressed myself as I may
suppose David would have done, had he lived in the days of
Christianity; and by this means, perhaps, I have sometimes
hit upon the true intent of the Spirit of God in those verses
farther and clearer than David himself could ever discover, as
St. Peter encourages me to hope (1 Peter i. 11, 13) where he
acknowledges that the ancient prophets, who foretold of the
grace that should come to us, were, in some measure, ignorant
of this great salvation; for though they testified of the
sufferings of Christ and His glory, yet they were forced to
search and inquire after the meaning of what they spake or
wrote. In several other places I hope my reader will find a
natural exposition of many a dark and doubtful text, and some
new beauties and connections of thought discovered in the
Jewish poet, though not in the language of a Jew. In all places
I have kept my grand design in view, and that is to teach my
author to speak like a Christian. For why should I now address
God my Saviour in a song, with burnt sacrifices of fatlings,
and with the fat of rams? Why should I pray to be sprinkled
with hyssop, or recur to the blood of bullocks and goats? Why
should I bind my sacrifice with cords to the horns of an altar,
or sing the praises of God to high-sounding cymbals, when the
Gospel has shown me a nobler atonement for sin, and appointed
a purer and more spiritual worship? Why must I join with David
in his legal or prophetic language to curse my enemies, when my
Saviour in His sermons has taught me to love and bless them?
Why may not a Christian omit all those passages of the Jewish
psalmist that tend to fill the mind with overwhelming sorrows,
despairing thoughts, or bitter personal resentments, none of
which are well suited to the spirit of Christianity, which is
a dispensation of hope and joy and love? What need is there
that I should wrap up the shining honours of my Redeemer in the
dark and shadowy language of a religion that is now for ever
abolished, especially when Christians are so vehemently warned
in the Epistles of St. Paul against a Judaizing spirit in their
worship as well as doctrine? And what fault can there be in
enlarging a little on the more useful subjects in the style of
the Gospel, where the psalm gives any occasion, since the whole
religion of the Jews is censured often in the New Testament as
a defective and imperfect thing?”

And, again, he says on the—

SPIRIT OF THE HEBREW PSALMS.

“Moses, Deborah, and the princes of Israel; David, Asaph,
Habakkuk, and all the saints under the Jewish state, sung
their own joys and victories, their own hopes, and fears, and
deliverances, as I hinted before; and why must we, under the
Gospel, sing nothing else but the joys, hopes, and fears of
Asaph and David? Why must Christians be forbid all other melody
but what arises from the victories and deliverances of the
Jews? David would have thought it very hard to be confined to
the words of Moses, and sung nothing else on all his rejoicing
days but the drowning of Pharaoh of the fifteenth of Exodus.
He might have supposed it a little unreasonable, when he had
peculiar occasions of mournful music, if he had been forced to
keep close to Moses’ prayer in the ninetieth Psalm, and always
have sung over the shortness of human life, especially if he
were not permitted the liberty of a paraphrase; and yet the
special concerns of David and Moses were much more akin to
each other than ours are to either of them, and yet they were
both of the same religion; but ours is very different. It is
true that David has left us a richer variety of holy songs than
all that went before him; but, rich as it is, it is still far
short of the glorious things that we Christians have to sing
before the Lord; we and our churches have our special affairs
as well as they. Now, if by a little turn of their words, or
by the change of a short sentence, we may express our own
meditations, joys, and desires in the verse of those ancient
psalmists, why should we be forbidden this sweet privilege?
Why should we, under the Christian dispensation, be tied up to
forms more than the Jews themselves were, and such as are much
more improper for our age and state too? Let us remember that
the very power of singing was given to human nature chiefly for
this purpose, that our own warmest affections of soul might
break out into natural or divine melody, and that the tongue of
the worshipper might express his own heart.”

The following well expresses his modest estimate of his work: “I must confess I have never yet seen any version or paraphrase of the Psalms, in their own Jewish sense, so perfect as to discourage all further attempts. But whoever undertakes the noble work, let him bring with him a soul devoted to piety, an exalted genius, and withal a studious application; for David’s harp abhors a profane finger and disdains to answer to an unskilful or a careless touch. A meaner pen may imitate at a distance; but a complete translation or a just paraphrase demands a rich treasury of diction, an exalted fancy, a quick taste of devout passion, together with judgment, strict and severe, to retrench every luxuriant line, and to maintain a religious sovereignty over the whole work. Thus the psalmist of Israel might arise in Great Britain in all his Hebrew glory, and entertain the more knowing and polite Christians of our age. But still I am bold to maintain the general principle on which my present work is founded; and that is, that if the brightest genius on earth, or an angel from heaven, should translate David and keep close to the sense and style of the inspired author, we should only obtain thereby a bright or heavenly copy of the devotions of the Jewish king; but it could never make the fittest psalm-book for a Christian people. It was not my design to exalt myself to the rank and glory of poets, but I was ambitions to be a servant to the Churches and a helper to the joy of the meanest Christian. Though there are many gone before me who have taught the Hebrew psalmist to speak English, yet I think I may assume this pleasure of being the first who hath brought down the royal author into the common affairs of the Christian life, and led the Psalmist of Israel into the Church of Christ, without anything of a Jew about him. And whensoever there shall appear any paraphrase of the Book of Psalms that retains more of the savour of David’s piety, or discovers more of the style and spirit of the Gospel, with a superior dignity of verse, and yet the lines as easy and flowing and the sense and language as level to the lowest capacity, I shall congratulate the world, and consent to say, Let this attempt of mine be buried in silence.”

This chapter must not be closed without some slight reference to the wonderful history and anecdote connected with these hymns; verses from them have been murmured from innumerable death-beds, have shone out as memorial lines on innumerable tombstones, and have proved, in how many instances, to be the converting word, the power of God unto salvation. When the great orator and statesman of the United States, Daniel Webster, lay dying, almost the last words which fell from those eloquent lips which had so often moved in the Senate with thrilling and overwhelming power, were those words of Watts’ 51st Psalm; and he repeated them again and again:

Show pity, Lord: O Lord, forgive;
Let a repenting rebel live;
Are not Thy mercies large and free?
May not a sinner trust in Thee?

And the gravestone of the great shoemaker, scholar, linguist, and missionary, William Carey, in Bengal, contains beside the name and date only that final confession of faith:

A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
On Thy kind arms I fall.

The late beautiful and beloved William Bunting used to tell a story of a poor blind woman, in Liverpool, brought to a sense of sin and salvation at a Wesleyan service held in connection with the national fast upon the first visit of cholera to this country. Her impressions had been stirred by Watts’ hymn—the 224th of the Wesleyan Selection—“I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath.” The next morning she called on the Rev. R. McOwen, and asked if he could procure for her the book in which was the hymn with those lines, also Watts’,

The Lord pours eyesight on the blind,
The Lord supports the sinking mind.

It also was in the Wesleyan Hymn Book, which Mr. McOwen placed in her hands. Her memory was soon stored with the hymns which she delighted in repeating. By her talent in shampooing she earned a respectable livelihood. For this purpose she attended on the old Earl of Derby, the grandfather to the present Earl. She repeated one of her hymns to him. The old Earl liked it, and encouraged her to repeat more. But one day, when repeating the hymn of Charles Wesley, “All ye that pass by,” she came to the words:

The Lord in the day of His anger did lay
Your sins on the Lamb, and He bore them away,

he said, “Stop, Mrs. Brass, don’t you think it should be—

“The Lord in the day of His _mercy_ did lay?”

She did not think his criticism valid; but it showed she was not repeating her verses to inattentive ears, and other indications showed that the blind woman was made a blessing to the dying nobleman. But such anecdotes might be multiplied and extended to many pages.

Believed to have been presented by him to his friend and schoolmaster, the Rev. John Pinhorne, Master of the Grammar School, Southampton, now in the Vestry of Above Bar Chapel, Southampton.]