Join all the glorious names

Here is the first and finest of a wealth of hymns celebrating the varied titles of the Lord Jesus Christ—or rather half of it, since Isaac Watts supplied 12 stzs in all. Others are found at 329, 480 etc; the earlier 299 and 306 could also qualify. This selection is the same as in CH, Rejoice and Sing, and other books; GH and HTC (etc) omit what has become stz 5. By arranging the hymn in 2 parts, Congregational Praise (1951) includes all except the original stz 3 (‘Arrayed in mortal flesh, he like an Angel stands …’) and repeats stz to begin pt 2; this plan is followed by Christian Worship (1976) and PHRW, and has much to commend it. The 1933 Methodist Hymn Book prints 10 stzs, which Hymns and Psalms (1983) reduces to 7. Watts’ heading in his 1707 Hymns and Spiritual Songs is ‘The Offices of Christ: from several Scriptures’. It is the last (no.150) and greatest of a series of 5 such hymns which bring Bk I, Psalter-like, to a close; 146 has 18 LM stzs; 148 begins ‘With cheerful voice I sing/ the titles of my Lord’, and 149 is getting very close with ‘Join all the names of love and power/ that ever men or angels bore.’

In some edns the Scriptures and titles are noted against each stz; missing from this selection are those describing him as Redeemer and Angel (neither of which are explicit NT ‘offices’), Counsellor (Pattern and Guide), Shepherd, Surety, and Advocate. The author delighted in these lists, and this was not the only versified form of such a catalogue. But of course the hymns are far more than even a ‘pageant’ as one writer calls this one, and each of its stzs has a direct personal application. Small changes include ‘poor’ for ‘mean’ (stz 1); ‘shall’ for ‘would’ (2); ‘service at’ for ‘bonds before’ (4, where ‘Saviour’ is also introduced in line 1); ‘the child of God’ for ‘a feeble saint’ (stz 5); and ‘malice’ for ‘mischief’ (6). Changes to this hymn are nothing new; Julian lists 8 variations of a single line between 1760 and 1876. Spurgeon preferred the original of this and even started the hymn with what had been its 10th stz: ‘My dear almighty Lord’.

Surprisingly, this hymn has no commonly agreed tune. Those in use include ADORATION (Havergal), CROFT’S 136TH, DARWALL’S 148TH, EASTVIEW, HAREWOOD, HOSYMEDRE, TRUMPET, WARSAW, and even GOPSAL. J B Dykes’ ST GODRIC, chosen by Hymns of Faith for this text and also used here at 930 and at 970 in A, was launched first to a different Watts hymn, Lord of the worlds above. It appeared in Richard Chope’s Congregational Hymn and Tune Book in 1862, being named after a 12th-c hermit who lived in a hut on the banks of the river Wear at Finchale. The composer spent many years at nearby Durham, but this tune has as yet no fixed abode.

b Southampton 1674, d Stoke Newington, Middx 1748. King Edward VI Grammar Sch, Southampton, and private tuition; he showed outstanding early promise as a linguist and writer of verse. He belonged to the Above Bar Independent Chapel, Southampton, where his father was a leading member and consequently endured persecution and prison for illegal ‘Dissent’. Some of the historic local landmarks in the family history, however, have question-marks over their precise location. But for Isaac junior’s undoubted first hymnwriting, see no.486 and note; the Psalm paraphrases then in use often were, or resembled, the Sternhold and Hopkins ‘Old Version’, described by Thos Campbell as written ‘with the best intentions and the worst taste’, or possibly the similarly laboured versions of Thomas Barton. His solitary marriage proposal to the gifted Elizabeth Singer was not the only one she rejected, but they remained friends, and her own hymns (as ‘Mrs Rowe’) were highly praised and remained in print until at least around 1900. After further study at home, in the year after Horae Lyricae (published 1705) and at the age of 32, Watts became Pastor of the renowned Mark Lane Chapel in the City of London and private tutor/chaplain to the Abney family at Theobalds (Herts) and Stoke Newington. Chronic ill health prevented him from enjoying a more extensive or prolonged London ministry, though with the care of a loving household he lived to be 74.

In 1707 came the 3 books of Hymns and Spiritual Songs, and in 1719, The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, and Applied to the Christian State and Worship. As he is acknowledged as the father of the English hymn, so he became the pioneer of metrical Psalms with a Christian perspective. He is acknowledged as such by Robin Leaver who once added, a touch prematurely, that he was equally the assassin of the English metrical Psalm! His own ‘design’ was ‘to accommodate the Book of Psalms to Christian Worship…It is necessary to divest David and Asaph, etc, of every other character but that of a Psalmist and a Saint, and to make them always speak the common sense of a Christian’. His ‘Author’s Preface’ from which this is taken is a brief apologia for his aim and method; he desires to serve all ‘sincere Christians’ rather than any one church party, and he explains the careful omissions and interpretations of hard places. Above all, he is ‘fully satisfied, that more honour is done to our blessed Saviour, by speaking his name, his graces and actions, in our own language…than by going back again to the Jewish forms of worship, and the language of types and figures.’

Not always accepted by his contemporaries, he nevertheless laid the foundations on which Charles Wesley and others built. Some of his hymns and Psalm versions are among the finest in the language and still in worldwide use; Congregational Praise (1951) has 48 of his hymns, and CH (2004 edn), 59. Many of these are found in the early sections of a thematically-arranged hymn-book, under ‘God the Father and Creator’ or similar category.

With his best-selling Divine Songs attempted in Easy Language, for the sake of Children (1715) he was the most popular children’s author in his day (and well into the 19th c); those who understandably recoil today at some of them would do well to see what else was on offer, even 100 or more years later. Watts, too, was a respected poet, preacher and author of many doctrinal prose works. He corresponded as regularly as conditions then allowed with the leaders of the remarkable work in New England. A tantalisingly brief reference in John Wesley’s Journal for 4 Oct 1738 (neither repeated nor paralleled, and less than 5 months after JW’s ‘Aldersgate experience’), reads: ‘1.30 at Dr Watts’. conversed; 2.30 walked, singing, conversed…’. Dr Samuel Johnson and J Wesley used his work extensively, the former including many quotations from Watts in his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. His work on Logic became a textbook in the universities from which he was barred because of his nonconformity. The current Oxford Book of English Verse (1999) includes 5 items by IW including his 2 best-known hymns. Further details are found in biographies by Arthur P Davis (1943), David Fountain (1974) and others, the 1974 Annual Lecture of the Evangelical Library by S M Houghton, and publications of the British and N American Hymn Societies (by Norman Hope, 1947) and the Congregational Library Annual Lecture (by Alan Argent, 1999). See also Montgomery’s 4 pages in his 1825 ‘Introductory Essay’ in The Christian Psalmist, where he calls Watts ‘the greatest name among hymnwriters…[ who] may almost be called the inventor of hymns in our language’; and the final chapter of Gordon Rupp’s Six Makers of English Religion (1957). The 1951 Congregational Praise is rare among hymn-books for including more texts by Watts than by C Wesley. Nos.5*, 122, 124, 136, 146, 163, 164, 171, 189, 208, 214, 231, 232, 241, 255, 260, 264, 265, 300, 312, 363, 401, 411, 453, 486, 491, 505, 520, 549, 557, 560, 580, 633, 653, 692, 709*, 780, 783, 792, 794, 807, 969, 974*, 975.