The great hymnwriter Isaac Watts was born 350 years ago in Southampton on 17 July 1674. He wrote 750 hymns many of which are familiar today even to people who seldom go to a church service. At Christmas congregations all over the English-speaking world sing his hymn “Joy to the world”; on Remembrance Day they sing “O God our help in ages past”; at Easter and at Communion services they sing “When I survey the wondrous cross”, probably the greatest ever English language hymn. He was a nonconformist and wrote at a time when churches mainly sang settings of the Psalms. His hymns use straightforward language which is still easily understood today. He is known as the “father of hymnody”.
Worship and singing are central to the faith of the Bible because God is worthy to be praised. God himself describes “the morning stars singing together and all the angels shouting for joy.” King David wrote music and songs and played the lyre. He wrote many of the Psalms. In the Old Testament there were wonderful choirs in the Temple. The early Christians were encouraged to “speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs and to sing and make music from their hearts to the Lord.” The book of Revelation describes the glorious worship of heaven as ten thousand times ten thousand angels sing, “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise!” All creation joins them singing, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever!”
Isaac Watts’ hymns express the joy experienced by those who love God and who rejoice in the future hope of being with him: “Come, we that love the Lord, and let our joys be known; join in a song with sweet accord, and thus surround the throne. The sorrows of the mind be banished from the place; religion never was designed to make our pleasures less. We’re marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion; we’re marching upward to Zion, the beautiful city of God.”
Isaac Watts’ hymns focus on God’s amazing love seen in the Cross of Jesus. The death of Jesus shows the depth of God’s love for sinful people like us and the lengths to which he went in order to save us. Issac Watts describes the joyful response of those who experience God’s love in Jesus: “Were the whole realm of nature mine that were an offering far too small, love so amazing so divine demands my soul my life my all.”