In the pulpit, though his low stature, which very little exceeded five feet, graced him with no advantages of appearance, yet the gravity and propriety of his utterance made his discourses very efficacious. […] He did not endeavour to assist his eloquence by any gesticulations; for, as no corporeal actions have any correspondence with theological truth, he did not see how they could enforce it. At the conclusion of weighty sentences he gave time, by a short pause, for the proper impression.
SAMUEL JOHNSON: Lives of the English Poets (1779 and 1781)
One of nine children, Watts grew up in an atmosphere of religious nonconformity – his mother nursed him as a baby outside Southampton Gaol, where her husband had been imprisoned for dissent. Not a member of the Church of England, Watts refused a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge, and trained instead at the Dissenting Academy at Stoke Newington. He was attached for several years as minister at Mark Lane Chapel in London, where he was by all accounts an inspiring teacher; but when his health deteriorated, he spent the last thirty-six years of his life as a house-guest at the homes of Sir Thomas and Lady Abney. Dissatisfied with the hymns he heard in church, he wrote nearly 700 of his own, most of which break free from the strict metrical paraphrases of the Bible that had been the norm. His publications include The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity […] Asserted and Prov’d (1722), Logick; or The Right Use of Reason in Enquiry after Truth (1725) and The Art of Reading and Writing in English (1721), which was used as a university and college text book. Popular at the time, but since mocked, were his Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language for Children (1715), which Lewis Carroll satirized in Alice in Wonderland. Other collections of verse include: Horae Lyricae (1706), Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707) and The Psalms of David Imitated (1719). Samuel Johnson felt that many of the hymns lacked ‘sprightliness and vigour’ (Lives of the English Poets), but the best have an undeniable resonance and express subjective religious experience in a way that was new. According to Ian Bradley in The Daily Telegraph Book of Hymns, ‘When I survey the wondrous Cross’ is the first hymn in the English language to use the personal pronoun ‘I’.
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.
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 flow’ry fields the nations stand
Pleas’d with the morning light;
The flowers beneath the Mower’s hand
Lie withering e’er ’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.
When I survey the wondrous Cross,
Where the young Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast
Save in the death of Christ my God;
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his blood.
See from his head, his hands, his feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down;
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?2
His dying crimson, like a robe,
Spreads o’er his body on the Tree;
Then am I dead to all the globe,
And all the globe is dead to me.
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.