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Watts In Space?
The communion hymns of Isaac Watts
The Voyager Golden Record: The Sounds of Earth
In the last Vital Sparks article, A Glorious Sight Appears, I mentioned that Isaac Watts’s Hymns and Spiritual Songs, which has contributed so many lyrics for songs in The Sacred Harp, were of three types: poems based on Scripture, poems based on other Christian themes, and selection of hymns for use during the celebration of the Lord’s supper1 .
The last category intrigued me. Watts wrote twenty-five hymns in this category. Do we sing any of them? To make this essay a bit more interesting, I have extened our search to some other commonly used shapenote books, the Cooper edition of The Sacred Harp (the “Cooper book”), The Christian Harmony (2010 edition), and The Shenandoah Harmony, in addition to the 1991 edition of The Sacred Harp (the “1991 edition”) that has been the focus of my essays so far. Two of the poems is found in the 1991 edition, and one is very well known; I bet you can guess which poem it is. I’ll discuss it last.
To add even more spice to the essay, I’m make a bold claim and say that a version of a Watts communion even made it into the furthest reaches of space. You’ll see it’s a bit of a stretch, but I encourage you to guess what this one is, too. I’ll discuss it penultimately.
Christ’s dying love (hymn 4)
The Christian Harmony has a version of communion hymn 4 “Christ’s dying love,” is found in 63t CONDESCENSION.
How condescending and how kind
Was God's eternal Son!
Our mis’ry reach'd his heav'nly mind,
And pity brought him down.
When justice by our sins provok'd,
Drew forth its dreadful sword,
He gave his soul up to the stroke,
Without a murm’ring word.
He sunk2 beneath our heavy woes,
To raise us to his throne:
There's ne’er a gift his hand bestows,
But cost his heart a groan.
That last sentiment, every good gift that Christ gives cost him pain, is exquisite theology.
Pardon brought to our senses (hymn 11) and The agonies of Christ (hymn 16)
One of the songs in the 1991 edition, 463 OUR HUMBLE FAITH, puts together verses from two different communion hymns. The text in the 1991 edition is:
Lord, how divine Thy comforts are,
How heav’nly is the place,
Where Jesus spreads the sacred feast
Of His redeeming grace.
Our humble faith is made to rise
while sitting ’round His throne,
And back to Calvary it flies
to view its groaning Lord.
The first verse of 463 OUR HUMBLE FAITH comes from “Pardon brought to our senses” (hymn 11) and is (except for punctuation and capitalization choices) the same as in hymn 11. But the second verse, from which the Sacred Harp song takes its name, is somewhat altered from the version in “The agonies of Christ” (hymn 16), where it is the third verse:
Our humble faith here takes her rise ,
While sitting round his board;
And back to Calvary she flies,
To view her groaning Lord.
I can see why “throne” is substituted for “board” — but “board” here means the table of the Lord’s supper, and so the communion connection is lost, and the first verse of 463 has talked about Jesus’s spreading of the sacred feast, and so one could imagine restoring “board” (which also rhymes with “Lord,” unlike “throne.”) But it’s fine the way it is.
The Lord’s Supper instituted (hymn 1)
Hymn 1, “The Lord’s Supper instituted,” is found twice in The Shenandoah Harmony and once in The Christian Harmony. In the later, it’s even given the name 209 THE LORD’S SUPPER and all seven verses are printed, with few changes:
‘Twas on that dark, that doleful night,
When pow'rs of earth and hell arose
Against the son of God's delight,
And friends betray'd him to his foes.
Before the mournful scene began,
He took the bread, and blessed, and brake:
What love thro' all his actions ran !
What wond'rous words of grace he spake!
“This is my body , broke for sin;
Receive and eat the living food:”
Then took the cup, and blessed the wine;
“‘Tis the new cov'nant in my blood.”
For us, his flesh with nails was torn,
He bore the scourge, he felt the thorn;
And justice pour'd upon his head
Its heavy veng'ance in our stead .
For us, his vital blood was spilt,
To buy the pardon of our guilt;
When for black crimes of biggest size
He gave his soul a sacrifice.
“Do this,” he cry'd, “‘till time shall end,
In mem'ry of your dying friend:
Meet at my table, and record
The love of your departed Lord.”
Jesus thy feast we celebrate,
We show thy death, we sing thy name,
‘Till thou return, and we shall eat
The marriage-supper of the Lamb.
This is the hymn I can claim made it into space. Blind Willie Johnson’s recording of “Dark was the night, cold was the ground” was one of the pieces of music recorded on the Voyager Golden Record onboard the Voyager spacecraft in 1977, currently the human-made object farthest from Earth and is traveling in interstellar space. Now, “Dark was the night, cold was the ground” was actually written by Thomas Haweis in 1792,3 just a year after Watts’s hymn 1. Furthermore, Johnson didn’t sing any words, but only vocalized. But Haweis’s words seem (to my mind) to echo Watts’s:
Dark was the night, and cold the ground
On which the Lord was laid;
His sweat, like drops of blood ran down;
In agony He prayed:
Father, remove this bitter cup,
If such Thy sacred will;
If not, content to drink it up,
Thy pleasure I fulfill.
Go to the garden, sinner; see
Those precious drops that flow,
The heavy load He bore for thee—
For thee He lies so low.
Then learn of Him the cross to bear;
Thy Father’s will obey;
And when temptations press thee near,
Awake to watch and pray.
It’s a thin reed to build an argument on, so just go enjoy the recording and ignore my claim.
Crucifixion to the world by the cross of Christ, hymn 7
This brings us to hymn 7, “Crucifixion to the world by the cross of Christ.” This text is found in the Cooper edition (242 NEWTON), The Christian Harmony (105b HAMBURG), and in the 1991 edition (447 WONDROUS CROSS). It’s one of the most famous of Watts’s poems:
When I survey the wond'rous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God;
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his blood.
See from his head, his hands, his feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?
His dying crimson like a robe,
Spreads o'er his body on the tree;
Then am I dead to all the globe,
And all the globe is dead to me.
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
This is one of the songs Bess and I love to lead. Here’s Chris Brown leading it at the Tenth Ireland Sacred Harp Convention, in a stately manner, as we like to lead it, but Amanda Jokerst, at the Seventh convention, lead it a more sprightly tempo, which is also very good.
1 In fact, in the 1791 edition, Watts couldn’t help himself: “I cannot perfuade myſelf to put a full period to thefe DIVINE HYMNS , till I have addreffed a fpecial Song of Glory to God the FATHER, the SON, and the HOLY SPIRIT.” And so he added a fourth section of nineteen doxologies. I don’t think these are sung, but there’s a nice Trinitarian one: Glory to God the Trinity/Whose name has mysteries unknown;/In essence One, in persons Three;/A social nature, yet alone.
2 The Christian Harmony has “sank,” normalizing it to modern English “sink, sank, sunk.” Don’t make fun of people who say, “The boat sunk yesterday;” they have Watts on their side.
3 According to Hymntime.