Description
Give Us Something Better
Isaac was a young man who had a first-hand knowledge of intolerance. Born in 1674, he was the first child of a committed religious Dissenter/Nonconformist, who was a deacon of the Independent or Congregational Church in England. His father was imprisoned twice for his views which did not align with the religion practiced by the reigning monarchy. As a baby, his mother would nurse him on the prison steps and hold Isaac up to the window for his father to see.
Isaac’s father ran a boarding school of high repute, and students were sent not only from England, but as far away as America and the West Indies to live and study. Young Isaac attended classes in school and early on showed a precocious intellect. At age four, he began to learn Latin, and by the age of thirteen he had added Greek, French, and Hebrew to his studies.
His intelligence was recognized by a local physician and other prosperous donors in the community and they offered to sponsor him to attend university at Oxford or Cambridge. A youth with so much promise deserved an education in the best schools in the country – however, because of prejudice and intolerance, he could not attend unless he renounced his family’s Nonconformist beliefs. Instead, he chose to be educated at the Dissenting Academy in Stoke Newington, London.
Leaving the Academy at the age of 20, Isaac spent two years at home. One of his driving concerns was the poor quality of congregational singing in the churches he attended. The worshippers were restricted to texts of strict metrical versions of the Psalms from the Old Testament. The congregants sang slowly and without heart. One Sunday, after complaining about the singing in the church service, his father challenged, “Why don’t you give us something better to sing?” Isaac accepted his father’s challenge.
We know Isaac today as Isaac Watts, and he revolutionized the music sung by the Christian world. Having a talent for writing and producing rhyming poems in daily conversation, he wrote a new song each week for two years, which were enthusiastically sung by the congregation where his family attended church. He published these in a book titled Hymns and Spiritual Songs in 1709. During his lifetime, he wrote the words for over 800 hymns, but most were written during these two golden years. Some texts were based on psalms, while others were not straightforward translations or taken from other scriptures. When critics criticized his efforts saying it was not right to sing uninspired hymns not taken exactly from the Psalms, he replied that if people could pray to God in sentences that they made up themselves, then surely, they could sing to God in the same way.
In 1702, he became the pastor of the Independent Church, Berry Street, London, a position which he held for ten years. One friend who knew him wrote:
“He measured only about five feet in height, and was of a slender form. His complexion was pale and fair, his eyes small and gray, but animated, became piercing and expressive; his forehead was low and his cheekbones prominent. His voice was pleasant, but weak. A stranger would probably have been most attracted by his piercing eye, whose very glance was able to command attention and awe.”
Once at a hotel with some friends, Isaac overheard a rude remark from someone in the room who said, “What! Is that the great Dr. Watts?” His reply to his critic was:
“Were I so tall to reach the pole,
Or grasp the ocean with my span,
I must be measured by my soul,
The mind’s the standard of the man.”
After a poor health and a severe illness in 1712, he went to the house of Sir Thomas Abney to convalesce for a week, and stayed at their residence for the next 36 years as their guest. He wrote extensively including a legacy of hymns, educational works, sermons, and essays.
Religious intolerance continued to be a part of Isaac’s life. Dissenters in the empire were treated very badly. During the reign of Queen Anne in England in 1714, she forced through Parliament the Schism Act which had the aim of severely limiting religious freedoms. The Act was meant to constrain, convert, or stop Dissenter schools.
It was at this turbulent time that Isaac Watts wrote the lyrics to a song that he hoped would impart assurance and hope to those standing with him on religious principle. It was a paraphrase of Psalm 90:1-5. Today that hymn which was written in conflict, has spanned the world and been published in 1,149 hymnals.
O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.
Beneath the shadow of thy throne,
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is thine arm alone,
And our defense is sure.
Before the hills in order stood,
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting thou art God,
To endless years the same.
A thousand ages in thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.
Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.
O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guide while life shall last,
And our eternal home.
Isaac Watts died in November 1748 in his 75th year. Monuments were erected in his hometown of Southampton, as well as in the Church of England’s Westminster Abbey, in recognition of his contributions to church music. To this day, some 300 years later, he is known as the Father of English Hymnody, not only for what he wrote, but because he freed the hearts of the people to pray and worship by song.
https://hymnary.org/person/Watts_Isaac
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/70.html
Copyright Glenn Rawson 2021
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