Isaac Watts: A Life’s Work (1674 – 1748)

When Isaac Watts’ mother found some of his early verse and expressed doubt that he wrote it, the child immediately composed this acrostic for her:

I am a vile polluted lump of earth,
S o I’ve continued ever since my birth;
A lthough Jehovah grace does daily give me,
A s sure this monster Satan will deceive me,
C ome, therefore, Lord, from Satan’s claws relieve me.

W ash me in Thy blood, O Christ,
A nd grace Divine impart,
T hen search and try the corners of my heart,
T hat I in all things may be fit to do
S ervice to Thee, and sing Thy praises too.¹

It was less than perfect, but it pointed to great things to come, including the hymns, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” “Joy to the World,” and “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.”

Some lives are so productive that one might wonder whether two or more people were collaborating under the same name. Such was the case with Isaac Watts (1674-1748). In addition to composing over 600 hymns, many of which are still sung each Sunday by Christians around the world, he wrote a book on logic which was used as a text for many years at both Oxford and Cambridge.² For several years, he was a family chaplain and tutor in Leicestershire, an experience which richly informed his books, Improvement of the Mind and A Discourse on the Education of Children and Youth.³ After that, he was pastor of Mark Lane Independent Chapel in London. Along the way, he wrote well-received essays on a variety of topics, from ghosts,⁴ to astronomy,⁵ to the poetry of Horace.⁶

Bad health cut short his work as pastor. Indeed, “[h]e was of a slight and most fragile frame throughout his life.”⁷ In his journal, he noted his illnesses in a variety of ways: “a great and dangerous sickness” (1689);⁸ “violent jaundice and cholic [colic]” (1702);⁹ “a disorder of my stomach, and fre[quent] pains of ye head” (1710).¹⁰ Under doctors’ orders he repeatedly visited the mineral springs at Bath, Tunbridge Wells, and Southton.¹¹

As “the first who succeeded in overcoming the prejudice which opposed the introduction of hymns into . . . public worship,”¹² Watts suffered harsh criticism from some of his fellow ministers, Thomas Bradbury in particular. Bradbury called him “profane, conceited, impudent, and pragmatical.” He charged him with “mangling, garbling, transforming, etc., . . . many . . . Songs of Zion.” He continued, “Your notions about psalmody . . . are fitter for one who pays no regard to inspiration. . .”¹³ Watts’ “crime” was that he paraphrased Scripture in his hymns and introduced Jesus in the Messianic psalms.¹⁴ On the other hand, one critic in a Wesleyan magazine complained that Watts’ hymns were too adaptable to the Unitarian hymnbook.¹⁵ He granted that Unitarians had to change them to make them fit, but retorted, “Charles Wesley’s hymns are made of too unbending materials ever to be adapted to Socinian worship.”¹⁶

Battered by illness, beset by critics, Watts continued his life’s work with equanimity. He reasoned, “Shall I repine then, while I survey whole nations and millions and millions of mankind that have not a thousand’s part of my blessings?”¹⁷ As death drew near, he wrote, “If God should raise me up again I may finish some more of my papers, or God can make use of me to save a soul, and that will be worth living for.”¹⁸ And for his tombstone, he asked these words: “Isaac Watts . . . after fifty years of feeble labours in the Gospel, interrupted by four years of tiresome sickness, was at last dismissed to his rest.”¹⁹ For Watts, to live was to work for the gospel. So simple—as it should be for all ministers, until they draw their last breath.

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