Roger Steer

Joy to the world, the Lord is come

While staying with family in Hackney in November 2024, my wife, Sheila, and I visited the memorial to Isaac Watts in Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, which has recently been restored to its original condition. Watts was born in 1674 at a time when, 33 years before the birth of Charles Wesley, his contemporaries were experimenting with the technique of hymn-writing. Benjamin Keach (1640-1704), a Baptist minister had introduced hymn-singing into his services and wrote hymns himself – but they are now generally thought of as rather clumsy attempts to versify obvious ideas. Watts’ poetry, as demonstrated in his Horae Lyrica (1706, 1709), illustrated the skill, passion and originality with which he wrote.

Watts was the son of a man who, like John Bunyan, had been in prison for his dissenting beliefs – dissenters being those who separated themselves from the Church of England. He was well educated in a dissenting academy in Stoke Newington and had wide interests including in language, philosophy and science. As a part of his interest in the sciences he loved the beauty of the created world which he linked in his mind with theology. We cannot separate his craft as a poet from the clarity of his Christian belief and his pursuit of the truth as revealed in the Scriptures. He believed in the importance of our ability to think but linked that with the mysteries of faith and hope.

Some years ago I was listening on BBC Radio 4 to a programme about the art of poetry. While it was not a religious programme, one of the speakers was talking about cadence – that is the rhythmic beat of sound – and he gave as an example of perfect cadence the final verse of perhaps Watts’ most famous hymn, When I survey the wondrous cross:

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.

This verse is, of course, far more than a brilliant example of the skill of the poet, it is a vehicle whereby we can recommit ourselves to offering ourselves to God in the light of what the ‘Prince of Glory’ did when he died for us. But Watts was able to catch all the moods of Christian worship when he wrote:

Come, let us join our cheerful songs

With angels round the throne;

Ten thousand thousand are their tongues,

But all their joys are one.

As we approach Christmas we shall, as ever, be grateful for Watts’ magnificent hymn which he based on Psalm 98. As well as any of the hymns he wrote it combines his love of the Christian story with his delight in the world God has created:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!

Let earth receive her King;

Let every heart prepare him room,

And heaven and nature sing,

And heaven and nature sing,

And heaven, and heaven and nature sing…

… with its magnificent climax in verse 2: Joy to the world, the Saviour reigns!