(hymn, 1707)
Charles Wesley, himself one of the greatest of hymn writers, reportedly said that he would give up all the hymns he had penned if he could have written “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” The man who did compose it, Isaac Watts, is widely considered to be the first great English hymn writer, and the headwaters from which the whole tradition of English hymns has flowed. This hymn has had many musical settings throughout the years, but the most widely embraced today is that of Lowell Mason, who in 1824 composed the haunting and stately tune by which is it commonly known today. It has become a staple of hymnbooks from every tradition of the Christian church, combining sensually passionate language with a powerful theological statement.
With imagery that is beautiful yet horrific, Isaac Watts invites us to join him at the foot of the cross and witness the pain and shock of Jesus’s death while meditating on what it has accomplished for those who embrace the meaning of his sacrifice. Watts does not spare our mind’s eye from the horror of the event, as we are made witness to the blood and the tears of Christ streaming from his crucified body: “See from His head, His hands, His feet, / Sorrow and love flow mingled down.” We can imagine the ringing of the hammer on the spikes, the taunting of the crowd, and the wailing cries of those who loved him.
Yet this is not only a moment of sadness but also of glorious victory: “Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, / Or thorns compose so rich a crown?” In light of this atoning death, Watts reminds us that all our earthly attainments are empty and vain, nothing in comparison to what Jesus attained for us on the cross: “I sacrifice them to His blood.” This crucial moment in human history changed everything. Christ’s sacrifice reorients what we see as valuable and provides a new perspective on the world and everything in it, calling us to make a sacrifice of our own: giving up our lives for the Savior.
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
Originally published in Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707–09), this hymn was placed within the section of the hymnal called, “Prepared for the Holy Ordinance of the Lord’s Supper,” which lets us know that Watts’s intention is for us to meditate on the sacrificial death of Christ as we partake of his body and blood in the Eucharist. Watts moves our emotions without becoming mawkish, sentimental, or overly subjective about the gracious gift that changes everything.
Isaac Watts was born in England in 1674, the son of a pastor who was a dissenter from the Anglican orthodoxy of the time and who served a couple of stretches in jail for his faith. The younger Watts was a child prodigy, beginning to learn Latin at age four, and by his early teens he had attained expertise in Greek, Hebrew, and French. He also showed a natural faculty for poetry. Rhyming couplets seemed to come easily to him, even from an early age. One day, when he was six, his family was sharing a solemn moment of prayer together when young Isaac began to giggle, fighting back laughter. His father stopped praying and sternly demanded an explanation for his behavior. It seems that the young boy had spotted a mouse running up the bell-rope that hung in the fireplace, and this little couplet has lodged itself in his brain: “There was a mouse for want of stairs / ran up a rope to say his prayers.”
At age fourteen, Watts wrote in his diary about a “considerable conviction of sin,” and not long thereafter of being “taught to trust in Christ.”1 Because his intellectual gifts showed such promise, a family friend offered to pay for him to attend either Oxford or Cambridge. But because to do so would have required him to renounce the dissenting religious views that had now become his own, he declined the generous offer and attended a less prestigious school. The four years he spent studying at Stoke Newington Academy near London broadened his intellectual horizons even further, and fueled interests in philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, and the ancient classics as well as theology. After graduation, he returned home to search out his vocation.
One Sunday afternoon, while returning from church services with his family, Watts complained aloud of the deplorable quality of the poetry in the hymns that were sung in church, saying that they lacked both beauty and dignity. His father was ready with a challenge: “Try and see if you can write something better.” He did. The very next Sunday Watts offered a newly penned hymn, “Behold the Glories of the Lamb.” The congregation loved it and wanted more. And so he began to compose new hymns, writing many of his greatest ones during the two years he studied at home as he sought out his calling, which he soon found in becoming an assistant pastor, and eventually head pastor, for the congregation at Mark Lane Independent Church in London. The church thrived and grew under his leadership, and the congregation was treated both to his sermons, which were filled with rich theology, and his hymns, which made that theology come alive in ways that captured their spiritual imagination. No wonder that some have referred to his hymns as “rhymed sermons” that touch both the mind and the heart.
In 1707 Watts published his first collection of hymns, called Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Revelation 5:9 (“and they sang a new song”) was one of the verses he used to justify the need for fresh songs of faith—ones that were both poetic and spiritually rich—that could be sung by a congregation to affirm their beliefs and celebrate their love for God. John Calvin and his followers had limited congregational singing to the actual words of Scripture—and largely that meant the psalms. Watts saw no reason why Christian songs of praise should be limited in this way, and he could see the effects of the current music clearly: “To see the dull indifference, the negligent and thoughtless air that sits upon the faces of the whole assembly while the psalm is upon lips, might tempt even a charitable observer to suspect the fervor of inward religion.”2 He used plenty of Scripture and its imagery throughout his songs, but to these he added his own unforgettable word pictures to reflect on the meaning and experience of faith. In doing so, he became the first great hymn writer and opened the door for many others to follow, bringing creative expression to congregational singing.
Although Watts was an exceptionally talented poet, he set aside some of his literary gifts to make sure that the songs were easily understood even by the illiterate members of the congregation and that they were easy to sing: hymns for the common man. They were mostly in simple four-line verses and written in common metrical forms that could be sung to familiar tunes. Because of the limitations he set for himself, some of his lyrics and rhyme schemes may seem stilted and awkward to the modern ear, but a great number of them still speak to us with great beauty and clarity. He even created a collection of songs and rhymes on spiritual themes for children called Divine Songs.
In all, Watts wrote an astonishing 750 hymns, many of which have their place in nearly every modern hymnbook. He also wrote what has become one of the most popular Christmas songs, “Joy to the World,” though he would probably be dismayed to see it relegated to use only during the Christmas season, as it celebrates not only the first coming of Christ but also his second coming as ever-reigning King.
During his pastoral years, Watts also began to work on a new rendering of the psalms. In his time, congregational singing of the psalms was an important element of the worship service, but he found these adaptations of the psalms to be poetically awkward and lacking in relevance for the Christian believer. His poetic reworkings were released as The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament and Applied to the Christian State and Worship. This long title summarizes what he hoped to achieve: to Christianize the psalms that were being used in churches, bringing out their relevance for the modern Christian. His goal was to express himself as David would have if he had been alive in the Christian era. Watts said he wanted to see “David converted into a Christian.” This project gave us two of his finest hymns: “Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun,” based on Psalm 72, and “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” which reworked Psalm 90.
Small in stature and reportedly unbecoming in looks, Watts was also of frail health for most of his life, and eventually had to retire from the pastorate when his health issues became too great to continue with the stresses of clerical life. Watts was invited to stay for a time with a friend and admirer in his rural home while he sought to recover, but this short visit ended up extending for thirty-six years. In these years of poor health he continued to write hymns that combined wonder at what God had done for humanity with an attitude of humility, gratitude, and praise. By age seventy-five he said he was “waiting God’s leave to die.”3 When he did, to quote the title of his own hymns, he entered the “land of pure delight where saints immortal reign.”