of liberty and order, of intelligence and sound morals. It is the only true conservatism; it is the only real friend of progress. It becomes then the descendants of the Puri

tans, to beware lest any man spoil them through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

In a preceding number* we gave some historical notices of English metrical versions of the Psalms. It remains for us now, as was proposed, to consider more particularly the change introduced by Dr. Watts, early in the last century, in the use of the Psalms in public worship. The discussion it has occasioned at various times is not unimportant, nor yet obsolete; and some of our readers will enter into it only the more readily, because it is remote from the hackneyed and exciting topics of the day.

The distinguishing character of the Psalms, as versified by Dr. Watts, is clearly indicated by the title which he gave them: "The Psalms of David, imitated in the language of the New Testament, and applied to the Christian State and Worship." According to his design, they are generally evangelical imitations, or New Testament paraphrases, rather than literal versions. The metrical Psalms that were in general use before the time of Dr. Watts, and are still in use wherever his work has not been adopted, (as in the English and Scotch establishments, and some other ecclesiastical connections,) were intended to be translations, as faithful to the original Psalms as the restraints of measure and rhyme would allow. There had been partial exceptions, as in Patrick's version, which, says Watts, was "by no means a translation, but a paraphrase," and had the advan

*This vol. pp. 72-86.

tage of substituting evangelical sentiment in many places, for such as was appropriate only to the Jewish Psalmist; yet the principle of adaptation was not fully carried out in that work, and was not at all regarded in the versions more generally adopted. Modern Christian assemblies sung in English, as nearly as possible, what the Jewish writers and worshipers sung before them, adopting not only the same spirit, but the same imagery, the same allusions, the same shadowy and obscure revelations of the Christian scheme afterwards fully unfolded, and even the same confessions, complaints and curses. Such was the theory of psalmody as to its materials.

Such could not be the practice, for every judicious minister sought a necessary relief by giving out only the more eligible portions of the book; he "waled a portion with judicious care," and thus the theory itself was virtually acknowledged to be unsuitable. But even with the liberty of disusing some whole psalms and parts of others, still of necessity worshipers would often find themselves employing, as their own, sentiments and expres sions that were either foreign to Christianity, or foreign to their condition.

Watts felt, as others had felt before him, the evil of confining Christians, in a chief part of the public worship of God, to the precise forms of the Jewish service, and the absolute impropriety of their adopting some things contained in them.

Knowing the opposition that any considerable change would meet with, he discussed the subject in a separate tract, which we have seen only in the complete collection of his works, and also in the preface to his Psalms, (dated 1718,) concisely, but with much vivacity and force. As far as the argument admits, he shows here the same combination of fervor and simplicity, that same unction, which characterises his verse. Vindicating the rights of Christian worship, he says:" Moses, Deborah, and the princes of Israel, David, Asaph, and Habakkuk, and all the saints under the Jewish state, sung their own joys and victories, their own hopes and fears and deliverances, as I hinted before; and why must we, under the gospel, sing nothing else but the joys, hopes and fears of Asaph and David? Why must Christians be forbid all other melody, but what arises from the victories and deliverances of the Jews? David would have thought it very hard to have been confined to the words of Moses, and sung nothing else on all his rejoicing days but the drowning of Pharaoh, in the fifteenth of Exodus. He might have supposed it a little unreasonable, when he had peculiar occasions of mournful music, if he had been forced to keep close to Moses' prayer, in the nineteenth psalm, and always sung over the shortness of human life, especially if he was not permitted the liberty of a paraphrase. And yet the special concerns of David and Moses were much more akin to each other than ours are to either of them; and they were both of the same religion, but ours is very different." He urges the fact, that many things in the Psalms are too glaringly inappropriate, to an assembly of modern worshipers, to be employed by them as their language. "I could never persuade myself," he says, "that the best way to raise a devout frame in plain Christians, was to bring a king or a captain into VOL. IV.

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their churches, and let him lead and dictate the worship in his own style of royalty, or in the language of a field of battle. Does every menial servant in the assembly know how to use these words devoutly-namely, when I shall receive the congregation, I will judge uprightly?— a bow of steel is broken by mine arms'-'as soon as they hear me, they shall obey me."" He appeals "to the heart and conscience of many pious and observing Christians" as to the difference they have felt in singing successive portions of the Psalms: "Have not your spirits taken wing, and mounted up near to God and glory, with the song of David on your tongue? But, on a sudden, the clerk has proposed the next line to your lips with dark sayings and prophecies, with burnt offerings or hyssop, with new moons and trumpets and timbrels in it— with confessions of sins which you never committed-with complaints of sorrows which you never feltcursing such enemies as you never had-giving thanks for such victories as you never obtained-or leading you to speak, in your own persons, of things, places and actions which you never knew. And how have all your souls been discomposed at once, and the strings of harmony all untuned! You could not proceed in the song with your hearts, and your lips have sunk their joy and faltered in the tune." In another place, after contrasting the Gospel, in its clearness and brightness, with the older dispensation, he asks with his own natural eloquence, "what need is there that I should wrap up the shining honors of my Redeemer in the dark and shadowy language of a religion that is now forever abolished ?"

In the same preface, Watts explains and vindicates his own design, to the satisfaction, we think, of unprejudiced readers, and it is made still clearer and more interesting by his own notes appended to several

of the Psalms. He proposed "to accommodate the book of Psalms to Christian worship ;" "and in order to do this," he says, "it is necessary to divest David and Asaph, &c. of every other character but that of a psalmist and a saint, and to make them always speak the common sense of a Christian." He would retain their sentiment and spirit, and their language also, as far as Christian use and edification require or allow, yet change the costume of their thoughts, so as to make the songs themselves more appropriate and effective now. When ordinary When ordinary Christians sing the Psalms of David, he would have them substitute Christianity for Judaism, and their own condition, experience and emotions for such as were peculiar to the Hebrew king. "I have rather expressed myself," he says, "as I may suppose David would have done had he lived in the days of Christianity." Accordingly, he "omitted some whole psalms,* and large pieces of many others;" choosing such parts only as might easily and naturally be accommodated to the various occasions of the Christian life, or, at least, might afford us some beautiful allusion to Christian affairs;" and these he "copied and explained in the general style of the Gospel," without restricting himself to any particular party or opinion" among "sincere Christians." The psalmist's "invectives against his personal enemies," he turns "against our spiritual adversaries." Where the expressions were pertinent to the sacred writer only, the paraphrase uses language "suited to the general circumstances of men." The prophecies concerning Christ, long since accomplished, are put into an historical form. Where Christ or his Apostles have "cited or alluded to any part of the Psalms," what they have said, which "surely may

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be esteemed the word of God still, though borrowed from several parts of the holy Scripture," is substantially incorporated with the paraphrase. "Where the psalmist," says Watts, "describes religion by the fear of God, I have often joined faith and love to it. Where he speaks of the pardon of sin through the mercies of God, I have added the blood or merits of a Savior; where he talks of sacrificing goats or bullocks, I rather choose to mention the sacrifice of Christ, the Lamb of God. Where he attends the ark with shouting in Zion, I sing the ascension of my Savior into heaven, or his presence in his church on earth. Where he promises abun dance of wealth, honor and long life, I have changed some of these typi cal blessings for grace, glory and life eternal, which are brought to light by the Gospel and promised in the New Testament. And I am fully satisfied that more honor is done to our blessed Savior by speak. ing his name, his graces and actions in his own language, according to the brighter discoveries he hath now made, than by going back again to the Jewish forms of worship, and the language of types and figures.” "All men," he adds, "will confess this is just and necessary in preaching and praying; and I cannot find a reason why we should not sing praises also in a manner agreeable to the present and more glorious dispensation." This last argument he enforces with pertinent illustra tions, and goes on to urge the unreasonableness of requiring modern Christians to sing only the same matter which they would have sung, if they had been Jews, two or three thousand years ago; and the disadvantage of losing, in this part of public worship, all the peculiar light and warmth of the New Testament. Indeed, the folly and the harm of singing nothing but prophecy after it has become history, and celebrating only types instead of the sub

stantial realities which distinguish evangelical prayer and preaching, have become so evident, that in the lapse of time most churches have been obliged to add to their psalms, hymns founded on other passages of the Bible. But Watts' argument goes further, showing the improprie ty of Christians singing many of the Psalms themselves, in their original and literal application. He, of course, contends for the most faithful translation of the whole book, as a part of the word of God, to be studied and regarded accordingly by all believers; but he would not have the whole of such a translation sung, because singing, like prayer, must be supposed to represent the condition and feelings of the worshipers, who can not thus, in their own persons, adopt many things in the Psalms which are for eign to their experience as Christians and as men. He does not allow, and it certainly can not be shown, "that the whole book of Psalms (even in the original) was appointed by God for the ordinary and constant worship of the Jewish sanctuary or the synagogues, though several of them might be often sung; much less are they all proper for a Christian church." And while no man is more ravished with the strains of the Hebrew psalmist, he yet asks, very properly," how can we assume to ourselves all his words in our personal or public addresses to God, when our condition of life, our time, place and religion are so vastly dif ferent from those of David ?"

We need not say that, in common with the multitudes who have used

Dr. Watts' work, we are persuaded that his views are just, and that his method of adapting the Psalms to Christian use and worship, by paraphrases or imitations,according to the language of the New Testament, is the true one-the method which the inspired authors would now approve, and which worshipers must find most satisfactory and profitable. We have

given the more space here to his argument because his own preface and notes are not now generally printed in the common edition of his Psalms, and the important questions to which they refer are still matters of debate. Even those who did not fall in with his design readily, acknowledged his success in its execution. In the naturalness and fluency of his verse, in genuine fervor of emotion, in vivacity of conception, along with the most chastened simplicity of language,* he is above all comparison with the authors of other popular versions. Availing himself of his freer method, he excels them still more in richness of evangelical sentiment. And so far as his main design allowed, he also transfuses the peculiar spirit of the Hebrew poets more fully into his own compositions-an excellence for which he was qualified by the objective habit of mind that distinguishes him among our sacred poets. Thus, in the 114th Psalm, he withholds the name of God till the miraculous tokens of an invisible power introduce, and, as it were, compel the sublime recognition. This and other instances are enough to show,

* His notes show the most anxious care to make his phraseology intelligible to common worshipers, and to preserve a gravity becoming the occasion and the themes: as on Ps. 139, in acknowledging the aid he derived from Tate and Brady, "My own design constrained me to leave he vindicates his own plainer language

out the words of a more poetic sound, such as "infernal plains, morning's wings, western main, sable wings of night, shapeless embryo, maze of life, &c."

"If I had introduced," he says in his

note, "the presence of God into the camp of Israel removing from Egypt, as all my predecessors have done, I had lost the divine beauty of the Psalm." This version was contributed by him to Addison's

Spectator, No. 461, (more than six years before it appeared in his own collection,) with a letter, in which the author's idea is more fully presented. The same feature of this Psalm is essentially preserved in the 2d version, in the new Connecticut Collection, which is from Rev. George Burgess's volume.

that had he attempted a proper version, instead of an evangelical imitation of the whole book, he must have surpassed all his predecessors. In the execution of his more desirable undertaking, he has had imitators, yet he is confessedly without a rival. He has the merit of origi nality, too, in the design, if not to the same extent as in his hymns; for though the evangelical interpretation of the Psalms is as old as the New Testament, and though some of them had been paraphrased in verse, with a degree of the same liberty, he was the first to apply that method fully and consistently to metrical psalmody, and thus to sup. ply the wants of Christian congregations. In a work so novel and responsible, he had the good sense to avail himself, in some instances, of such aid as could be had from his predecessors, and the candor to acknowledge it in his notes. We are surprised to find that Mr. Holland, (though an admirer of Watts,) and also Tattersall, whom he quotes on the subject, take notice of occasional resemblances, particularly to Patrick's version, as if they had not been pointed out by the writer himself. The notes which Watts appended to several of his Psalms ought still to be printed along with them, not only as showing his willingness to acknowledge every literary obligation, but because they

often enhance the interest of his paraphrases, and throw light on the inspired original.

It was a matter of course that such a change in Psalmody as Watts proposed, met with opposition and provoked discussion. The strict metrical versions already in use, had enlisted the force of habit and prejudice in their behalf. Besides the blind and stubborn prepossessions that are always in the way of reform, particularly in respect to public religious usages, there was a common impression that in the public worship of God, it was not right

to sing any other than the words of the Bible the very Psalms of David, or of other inspired saints-as nearly as they could be had in our language. Sermons might be human compositions; public prayers might be forms prescribed by uninspired men, or even extemporaneous;* but public praise could be properly offered only in the divine forms that were used under the old dispensation! Unreasonable as was the notion, unwarranted in the Bible, and even in the usages of the church, it was not therefore the less obstinate. There was argument enough, especially for the more ignorant, in saying that David was inspired, and Dr. Watts was not. Indeed the most enlightened advocates of the old versions could say no more. The obligation or the propriety of singing only the words of the Bible, and of singing every thing contained in the Psalms, was a mere assumption. Many passages were in fact left out of every public service at the minister's discretion, though printed with the rest, and thus in practice

The notion, says Watts, "appears of itself more eminently inconsistent in those persons that scruple to address God in prose in any precomposed forms whatsoever; and they give this reason, because they can not be fitted to all our present occasions; and yet in verse they confine their addresses to such forms as were fitted chiefly for Jewish worshipers, and for the special occasions of David the King."

It is said that a clergyman who wished to introduce Watts Psalms into his congregation instead of an old version, exchanged with a neighboring minister, whom he requested to propose the subject, and who gave notice in the morning,

that as Dr. Watts' book would be used in the afternoon, if any brother had objections he might now state them. A brother rose accordingly, and said he "would like to inquire if Dr. Watts was expired as David was." "I am happy," answered the minister, "to inform the brother lar stamp, was quieted as easily, when he that he is.' Another objector, of a simicomplained that the word Pause occurred so often in Watts, when it was not in the Bible. Why," said another, "we read the lion and the paw of the bear-and of David being delivered from the paw of there you find paws.”