Advent Through the Lens of Four Christmas Songs

Second Sunday of Advent 2010 AD

Joy to the World

Part 1

Psalm 98

The Song.

Joy to the World is Isaac Watts’ version of Psalm 98, which was included in his Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, and Applied to the Christian State and Worship, published in 1719.  Watts’ called his versions of the psalms “imitations” because he did not follow the normal pattern of simply paraphrasing the words in metrical verse.  Instead, Watts sought to present each psalm (1) in light of its fulfillment in Christ, and (2) in such a way that it beckoned the individual believer to embrace the truth of the fulfilled psalm in their personal spiritual experience.  Also, Watts’ intentionally included an objective or universal dimension as well as a subjective or personal dimension.  His imitations proclaim Christ’s fulfillment of the psalm as objectively true to all the world and subjectively (or personally) true to each believer.  This in part explains the popularity of Watts’ psalm imitations in his own day as well as today.

The writer.

Isaac Watts was born in 1674 in England in the home of a devout nonconformist father and mother.  (“Nonconformist” means they refused to conform to the Anglican Prayer Book which was imposed by law on the churches of England.)  Watts’ father went to jail on a couple of occasions due to his nonconformity, and it was something that Watts would pay for as well – he was ineligible to attend the major universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, and upon his death he was not allowed to be buried within London.  But though Watts sincerely held to nonconformist views, he was gracious and magnanimous in his personal conduct and ministry.  He wanted to minister to the whole Church, and in that he succeeded.  He not only authored over 700 hymns and psalm imitations, he wrote a number of scholarly works, including text books on logic and science.  In Watts’ day, book titles were not allusive and cryptic as they are in our day; they were descriptive and detailed.  And so his logic book was entitled Logic, or The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry After Truth With a Variety of Rules to Guard Against Error in the Affairs of Religion and Human Life, as well as in the Sciences.  It was very popular, going through twenty editions.  It was used as the standard logic text at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale. Indeed, it was the standard text at Oxford for well over 100 years.

The themes which resound in all of Watts’ hymns and psalm imitations are the sovereignty of God, the efficacy of Christ’s salvation, and the spiritual consecration of each believer.  We can certainly see these same themes in Watts’ own life.  When he was growing up, in addition to a love for books and learning, Watts had an affinity (an addiction you might say) to rhyming.  He would rhyme everything, even normal conversation, sometimes to the great annoyance of his parents.  One time, his dad had had enough, and he began to punish Isaac.  In the midst of the punishment, Isaac cried out, “O Father, do some pity take, And I will no more verses make.”  Another annoying habit Isaac had was complaining about the poor quality of the songs in the English psalters and hymnals.  Finally, his exasperated father said, “Stop complaining or write something better!”  Isaac took this as a challenge and by evening gave his father his first offering, which included the lines, “Behold the glories of the Lamb Amidst His Father’s throne; Prepare new honors for His name, And songs before unknown.”  That is just another way of saying, “Oh, sing to the LORD a new song! For He has done marvelous things; His right hand and His holy arm have gained Him the victory,” which is the opening line of Psalm 98.

But Watts knew hard providences as well.  He had small pox as a child, and it scarred him for life.  He only grew to be about five feet tall, and he was by all accounts extremely unattractive.  His head was way too large for his sickly body, his nose was very large and hooked, and he had small grey eyes. Isaac’s only romance was with Elizabeth Singer, who was a noted poet in her own right.  She admired Watts’ work, and they struck up a correspondence during which they fell in love.  After some months, Isaac went to propose, but Singer simply could not get past his appearance.  She turned him down.  “If only, I could say that I admire the casket as much as I admire the jewel it contains,” she lamented. Heartbroken but never bitter, Watts contented himself to be Singer’s friend, and he remained unmarried for the rest of his life.  Isaac’s graciousness was born of a deep faith in God’s loving providence. He later wrote to a friend about the incident:

I am persuaded, that in a future state we shall take a sweet review of those scenes of providence, which have been involved in the thickest darkness, and trace those footsteps of God when he walked with us through deepest waters. This will be a surprising delight . . . to have those perplexing riddles laid open to the eyes of our souls, and read the full meaning of them in set characters of wisdom and grace.

In addition to his hymns and psalms, Watts was known for his graciousness and engaging personality, as well as his preaching.  He may have been small and ugly outside, but he was a giant and beautiful inside, and God used him greatly.