Isaac Watts in 5 Sayings
Isaac Watts’ influence extends far beyond the hymns he penned. Today, Stephen Nichols reflects on five powerful sayings from Watts, revealing his deep theological insight and enduring impact on Christian worship.
Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. On this episode, we are looking at Isaac Watts, the founder of English hymnody, in five sayings. Watts lived from 1674 to 1748, and he wrote a lot. He wrote 750 hymns, and estimating at 125 words per hymn, well, that's 93,750 words. He also recast the 150 Psalms, and they're a little bit longer, so let's average those out at 250. Well, that's another 37,500 words. He wrote a number of theological and philosophical articles. The estimate there is somewhere around 400,000 words. And then we turn to his poetry, not hymns, and he racks up another 75,000 words. Well, here's Watts with his 600,000 words. And out of all of that, let's choose five sayings.
The first one comes from his Christmas hymn, and I'm sort of sad that it's a Christmas hymn because I wish we would sing this hymn all year long. It's “Joy to the World, The Lord has come.” Any one of these lines qualifies as a key saying, but I'm going to hone in on a line from the third stanza, “Far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found.” Christ came to make his blessings known. And how far and deep and why do those blessings go? Well, they cancel out the curse. They go as far as the curse is found.
For a second saying of Isaac Watts, let's go to another very popular hymn of his “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” Again, any of the stanzas provide a saying worthy of mention. But I'm going with one from the second stanza, “Of all the vain things that charm me most.” So, as we look to the cross of Christ, we realize just how vain and finite and unsatisfying these things are that can charm us well.
For our third saying, I'm going to a hymn that might not be as well known, “My Dear Redeemer and My Lord.” He begins the hymn by saying that our duty can be found in God's word, but in Christ's life, the law appears drawn out in living characters. And then he takes us to the third stanza, and here he pulls together Christ’s two moments of temptation, the temptation in the garden of Gethsemane, and then the first temptation and the wilderness. And so the third stanza, “Cold Mountains in the midnight air witnessed the fervor of your prayer; the desert your temptations knew, your conflict and your victory too.” Here we have the reminder of Christ and his incarnation being in space and time in real places. The Garden of Gethsemane is there. And in fact, unlike the Holy City, which is probably about 15 to 20 feet underneath where you're walking, the garden of Gethsemane is right there, these places of the incarnate Christ's temptation.
Well, that brings us to our fourth saying. And while much of Watt's hymns are about Christ, this one is about the Holy Spirit. And we probably don't talk about the Holy Spirit enough here. Watts says, “In vain, we tune our formal songs. In vain, we strive to rise Hosannas.” And then that leads him to the Holy Spirit. And so he says, “Come Holy Spirit, heavenly dove, with all your quickening power.”
Well, for our fifth and last saying of Watts, I'm going to what is hands down my favorite of his, “How Sweet and Awesome is this Place” and that second stanza where he sees us all gathered around the marriage feast of the Lamb, and there's Christ at the center. And he says, “While all our hearts and all our songs join to admire the feast, each of us cries, with thankful tongue, ‘Lord, why was I a guest? Lord, why was I a guest?’”
So that's Isaac Watts in five sayings, and by my count, about 43 of his 600,000 words. I'm Steve Nichols and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.
