Isaac Watts

1674-1748

LIFE

      Isaac Watts was the oldest of nine children of a Southampton clothier; his family were Dissenters and his father was imprisoned for religious reasons around the time Isaac was born.  He was a precocious child, learning Latin and Greek before he was 10 years old, and wrote verse even in childhood.  Here is a poem he wrote at age 7:

I am a vile polluted lump of earth

So I’ve continued ever since my birth

Although Jehovah grace does give me

As sure this monster Satan will deceive me

Come, therefore, Lord, from Satan’s claws retrieve me.

(Morgan 31)

Watts had a chance to attend Oxford, but would have had to embrace the Church of England to do so; instead, he went to a college for Dissenters in London. 

      At the age of 19, Watts composed a hymn for the use of his parents’ congregation (the Above Bar Congregational Church in Southampton); it was so successful, they asked for a new one each week, which he dutifully provided over a two-year period (Morgan 31).  Then he moved to London to tutor children of a wealthy family. In 1698, he was hired as associate pastor of the Mark Lane Independent Chapel, becoming senior pastor in 1702 at the age of 28; he remained in that position throughout his life.

      In 1707, Watts’ Hymns and Spiritual Songs appeared.  Despite their popularity and success, they were somewhat controversial because many Dissenting sects believed only the Psalms, not hymns, should be sung in church; this may have been an impetus to one of Watts’ major projects, an adaptation of the Psalms to Christian worship, published in 1719 as The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament.  Several of Watts’ most famous hymns come from this effort, including “Joy to the World” (based on Ps. 98) and “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past” (Ps. 90:1-5).  His approach was to take the words and emotions of the Psalm and place them into an explicitly New Testament context: “Where the Psalmist describes religion by the fear of God, I have often joined faith and love to it.” (Morgan 37)

      In 1712, Watts’ health began to deteriorate and the church hired an associate pastor to give him relief, allowing Watts to preach when he could.  At the same time, he was invited by a wealthy parishioner to spend a week on his estate, Theobalds (“Tib-balds”); he ended up living with them for the rest of his life, and dedicated Divine and Moral Songs for Children (1715) to their children.  On the Abney’s estate, Watts had his own set of apartments and books where he could work at his discretion.

      In 1739, Watts suffered a stroke that debilitated him for much of his remaining life, and was increasingly bedridden during his final years.

      In addition to his hymns and the Divine and Moral Songs, Watts wrote a variety of other works, including works on logic, grammar, philosophy, and geography, as well as theological arguments and sermons.  Although he disliked controversy and generally sought to mark out a more tolerant position than many of his fellow dissenters, Watts did write in favor of Dissent and against “the compromises and constraints of” state-supported religion (i.e., the Church of England) (Maclear 33). On the other hand, Watts produced one of the early arguments for a “‘secularized’ national cult,” in which religion is important but no one religion is established (Maclear 26).

Divine and Moral Songs for Children

      According to Patricia Demers, Watts was also an important figure in the development of religious education, “a preeminent figure whose influence, in Dissenting as well as Anglican circles, extended beyond the eighteenth century” (33). He believed that children should learn “the divergent realities of heaven and hell,” and that the primary method of instruction was repetition:

      “Repeat these things often to them by day and by night; teach them those things…; rehearse them in their ears at all proper seasons, and take occasion to make them repeat these things to you.”  (Demers 34)

 While not explicitly mentioned in relation to this scheme of catechism, it is not hard to see the Divine and Moral Songs as a vehicle for the constant reminders of Christian doctrine Watts felt that children should be exposed to. Verse was a common way in the 18^th century for writers to urge Christian virtues and theological principles on children, preferably by relating these more abstract principles to everyday life (Demers 93).

      Divine and Moral Songs sold 80,000 copies within a year of its first appearance and remained popular for many years afterward.  Watts’ goal was not to produce a distinctly partisan text, but rather one that could be used by all Christian families:

  “Children of high and low degree, of the Church of England or dissenters, baptized in infancy or not, may all join together in these songs.  And as I have endeavored to sink the language to the level of a child’s understanding…to profit all, if possible, and offend none.”                                 (Morgan 35)

As Demers notes, Watts “firmly anchors his songs in the child’s world of playing, reading, learning, and quarreling” (94).  While he was not against instilling in children a healthy fear of the consequences of sinful behavior, he generally addressed “the need to comfort and quieten the child….By making the common incidents of children’s lives his starting point, Watts gently, parternally inculcates precepts against vanity, disobedience, lying, fighting, and idleness in favor of piety, Christian upbringing, Bible knowledge, and industry.”  (Demers 96).  

One of the hymns from Divine and Moral Songs has persisted in modern hymnals for use by adults, not just children: “I Sing the Mighty Power of God.” 

SOURCES:  Patricia Demers, Heaven upon Earth: The Form of Moral and Religious Children’s Literature, to 1850, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,1993; J.F. Maclear, “Isaac Watts and the Idea of Public Religion,” Journal of the History of Ideas 53, 1 (Jan-Mar, 1992) 25-45; Robert J. Morgan, Then Sings My Soul: 250 of the World’s Greatest Hymn Stories, Vols. 1 &2, Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003; Zipes et al., Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature.

A. Waller Hastings
Professor of English
Northern State University
Aberdeen, SD  57401

Return to Wally Hastings' Children's Literature Page
Return to Wally Hastings' Homepage