When I survey the wondrous cross

‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world’ (Galatians 6:14). The section of this book devoted to Christ’s suffering and death closes with Wesley and Watts. It is probably unnecessary to assemble some of the superlatives which have applied to this great Communion hymn by the earlier and pioneer writer. It comes in his 1707 Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Bk 3: ‘Prepared for the Holy Ordinance of the Lord’s Supper’ and is headed ‘Crucifixion to the World by the Cross of Christ’—with the reference added. These 25 hymns, of which Praise! includes nos.2 (653 here), 7 (this one) and 10 (265) are followed by 20 doxologies, among them 38 (164). George Whitefield’s 1757 Supplement … helped to establish When I survey more generally.

Its structure, imagery and vocabulary, cosmic range and personal application have been praised, discussed and analysed extensively; among more recent treatments is that by J R Watson in The English Hymn (1997), pp160–70. Every word of the first line carries weight. The Brethren book Hymns for the Little Flock (1903 edition) may have been alone in starting ‘When we survey …’ but that pluralising meant further damage in the final stz, as Prof F F Bruce recalled in his autobiography. Line 2 originally read ‘where the young Prince of glory died’; that title is a blending of Psalm 24:7 with Acts 3:15 and 5:31, but the youthfulness of Christ was soon deemed by the 33-year-old author himself (influenced by friends?), and by most subsequent editors except Percy Dearmer and those of the 1962 Baptist Hymn Book, to be more distracting than relevant, and the change to what became the received text occurred as early as 1709. In stz 2 Watts wrote ‘death’, but the change to ‘cross’ proved widespread; most editors, however, resist the (Unitarian) alteration of ‘God’ to ‘Lord’ in line 2. He also wrote ‘all the vain things’ which HTC emended since ‘vain’ has changed its meaning. The visual impact of stz 3 is dynamic and vivid, enriched by the chiastic (abba) pattern of ‘sorrow and love … love and sorrow’; line 3 began ‘Did e’er such love …’, but ‘mingled’ is original, rather than ‘mingling’ which is sometimes printed.
Some original Watts phrases have been unhappily ‘borrowed’ to fill out many lesser texts.
The reasons which have led many books (from Whitefield onwards) to omit the ‘baroque’ stz 4, which Watts himself bracketed, may be those which necessitate changes here; but ‘his dying crimson, like a robe, spreads o’er his body …’ could well have been suggested by the crimson dye used on woollen fleeces in the Southampton dockside building next door to young Isaac’s school. The further chiasmus in lines 3–4 is owed to the text in Galatians 6. Some regret the now usual alteration of the homely ‘present’ (5.2) to the more churchy ‘offering’; Congregational and URC books and two recent Australian ones are among those retaining, or returning to, the original. Changes in the final line, though sometimes ventured, are to be resisted; the addition of an extra stz as in A&M 1861, retained until the 1950 edition, was even more absurd.

It may finally be observed here, first that the doctrine of the atonement, as spelled out for example in 437 and in the preceding 452 among others, underlies this hymn without being expounded here. And that hymns for the Lord’s Supper are concerned centrally with Christ’s death on the cross for us (for me) and not with other matters, however worthy.

The tune ROCKINGHAM is credited to Edward Miller, but his part probably lay in adapting and harmonising an anonymous tune and first publishing it (7 times over) in The Psalms of David for the Use of Parish Churches, 1790. It is headed ‘Rockingham L.M. Part of the melody taken from a Hymn Tune.’ The tune in question was TUNBRIDGE, set to Wesley’s All ye that pass by in A Second Supplement to Psalmody in Miniature, for ‘the Lock Tabernacle, Tottenham Court, Lady Huntingdon’s and Mr Wesley’s Chaples, Dissenting Meetings, etc etc’, c1780. Dr Miller had written beneath, ‘Would make a good long M[etre]’. ROCKINGHAM was probably not set to Watts’ hymn until 1833, in Goddings’ The Parochial Psalmodist, but since then has been the usual tune at least in Britain, in spite of strong criticism by such as Robert Bridges. It has had other names; the now accepted one commemorates Miller’s friend and patron the Marquis of Rockingham, who was twice Prime Minister. (Rockingham Castle nr Corby, Northants, was often visited by Chas Dickens.) The tune has been newly harmonised by Linda Mawson, and appears again at 910, an association going back to the 1861 A&M. Other tunes in current use are DEEP HARMONY (231), Lowell Mason’s HAMBURG=BOSTON, 608 (notably in N America), the folk-tune O WALY WALY (as in Youth Praise 2, 1969) and Roger Jones’ WHEN I SURVEY, with a 4th-line repeat.

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.