The Life and Legacy of Isaac Watts

[Historically, in church music] Lutherans sang hymns from the beginnings of the Reformation. Calvinists, though, in their zeal to use nothing but the Bible in worship, tended to restrict their singing to biblical psalms. Though they might have chanted them—a musical style that makes possible the singing of prose just as it is written without alteration, straight from the Bible—instead they made metrical translations, complete with regular rhythms and rhymes. In practice, these metrical psalms were closer in some ways to vernacular hymns than to the text of the Bible. Such psalm singing is still the practice in some conservative Reformed churches today, and it was the norm for early English Protestantism. Then came Isaac Watts

Who Was Isaac Watts?

The gifted hymnist Isaac Watts was born in 1674. His scholastic and literary aptitudes were evident at a young age, and he was offered a university education leading to ordination in the Church of England, but he refused, entering instead a Nonconformist academy at Stoke Newington. His prodigious output of hymns and lyric settings of the Psalter began at an early age. He was ordained pastor of the Independent congregation in Mark Lane in 1702, where he served as pastor to many eminent Independents, including the granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell.

Nonconformist churches believed that the songs of the New Testament Church should be limited to sung psalms. Yet Watts recognized that the historical, religious, and political setting of the psalms created barriers for eighteenth-century Christians. Through his lyric paraphrases of the psalms, he hoped to bridge this historical and rhetorical gap:

Tho’ the Psalms of David are a Work of admirable and divine Composure, tho’ they contain the noblest Sentiments of Piety, and breathe a most exalted Spirit of Devotion, yet when the best of Christians attempt to sing many of them in our common Translations, that Spirit of Devotion vanishes and is lost, the Psalm dies upon their Lips, and they feel scarce any thing of the holy Pleasure. (Isaac Watts, The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament [London, 1719], p. iii)

It was Watts’s goal to “accommodate the Book of Psalms to Christian Worship: And in order to this [sic] ’tis necessary to divest David and Asaph, &c. of every other Character but that of a Psalmist and a Saint, and to make them always speak the common Sense and Language of a Christian” (The Psalms of David, p. xvi). 

The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament

As a young man, so the story goes, Isaac Watts complained to his father about the way the Psalms were sung at worship in England. The very literal translations were tortured and uninspiring to him. His father challenged him to produce something better. He promptly attempted one himself, which was so well received that he produced many more.

In 1719, Watts published The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament. Watts wrote these psalm paraphrases to bring out the Christian sense of the Psalms, place them in the context of the ordinary believers of his day, and remove references offensive to them. “In all Places I have kept my grand Design in View, and that is to teach my Author to speak like a Christian,” he explained (The Psalms of David, p. xx).

“Joy to the world” appears in this book as one of two texts inspired by Psalm 98. Watts gave it the heading “The Messiah’s Coming and Kingdom.” He saw in this psalm a prophecy of the coming of Christ and the salvation He has won through His death, resurrection, and ascension.

By the nineteenth century, English-speaking Lutherans had embraced “Joy to the world,” although not always as a nativity hymn. After Lowell Mason, the Boston music educator and indefatigable compiler of tunebooks, popularized the hymn in his publications of 1837 and the following years, it grew to become an essential part of the celebration of Christmas in America. 

Hymnody for the Public

When Isaac Watts published his hymns, he divided them into three sections: hymns that paraphrased texts of Scripture, hymns of human composition on divine subjects, and hymns “for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.” Both the scriptural citation, Galatians 6:14, and the title, “Crucifixion to the World by the Cross of Christ,” clearly mark “When I survey the wondrous cross” as a hymn on the Lord’s Passion, and one would expect it to be placed in the second section. But in fact Watts included it among his Lord’s Supper hymns.

In the preface to his 1707 hymnal, Watts explained why he placed certain hymns in the Lord’s Supper category: “There are Expressions used in all these, which confine ’em only to the Table of the Lord, and therefore I have distinguish’d and set ’em by themselves” (Hymns and Spiritual Songs, p. xii). Watts, therefore, considered this specifically a hymn for the Lord’s Supper. When sung within that context, references to the body and blood of Christ, the flowing of sorrow and love, the power of such amazing love, and the transformation of one’s life, all take on a deeper and richer meaning. If the more specific references Lutherans expect are lacking, that is hardly surprising, as Watts was a Nonconformist and as such did not recognize the real presence of Christ in the Supper.

Having composed and published poetry for private devotional contemplation, Watts recognized that his hymnody was written for public congregational singing. For this reason, in the second edition of the book he intentionally identified aspects of hymns that might be “too Poetical for meaner Understandings, or too particular for whole Congregations to sing,” placing them in brackets and explaining that they could be omitted without disturbing the sense of the hymn (Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 2nd ed., p. xiv). 

Father of English Hymnody

Before Isaac Watts, English Protestants at worship tended to sing rhymed, metrical paraphrases of the psalms rather than hymns. Watts took the structures and tunes of these metrical psalms and gave them fresh, expressive lyrics that were not limited to the Old Testament texts. In doing so with such poetic power, Watts became the “father of English hymnody” (Julian 811, p. 343). In the preface to the 1707 book, Watts argued that singing only metrical psalms confines Christian worshipers to Old Testament expressions and does not allow their New Testament fulfillment to be proclaimed. Watts also set forth principles for his hymn writing. Though Watts was a Nonconformist pastor of strong, mostly Reformed, theological convictions, he wrote that he tried to compose his hymns so as to avoid sectarian controversies so that Christians of all persuasions could sing them. He also wrote that he worked hard to restrain his literary impulses so that all Christians, including the less educated, could understand what they were singing (Psalms of David, p. viii–ix). 

Blog post excerpted from pages 1435, 1345, 157–58, 248, 261–62 of Lutheran Service Book: Companion to the Hymns, Volume 1 © 2019 Concordia Publishing House. All rights reserved. 

Read and learn more about the names you see listed at the bottom of your hymnal with Lutheran Service Book: Companion to the Hymns.