“Ineffable” is one of those two-dollar words I learned as an undergraduate, probably in some philosophy class I had no right to be in. (A two-dollar word in 1974 is worth $13.40 these days.) If something is ineffable, it means it cannot be expressed adequately. I quoted Cynthia Y. Aaalders in my previous essay on Anne Steele: 

Since writing that essay, I have had the opportunity to read all of Aalders’s book. I found it of some value, but I think it misses the mark about language. I don’t think Steele’s poetry, especially as it appears in the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp, discusses language much. Suffering, yes; but language, no. On the other hand, Steele, time and time again, does express her gratitude and awe toward God, invoking God to aid her in understanding and expressing her praise.

In 258 INSPIRATION, she directly implores God to aid her:

Come, heav’nly love, inspire my song
With Thy immortal flame,
And teach my heart, and teach my tongue,
The Savior’s lovely name.

Dear Savior, let me call Thee mine;
I cannot wish for more.

Or ask God to show her the right way to express her love in 316 NEW HOPE¹ :

Jesus, what shall I do to show
How much I love Thy charming name?

She implores God to so fill her with experiences of the divine that God would be praised and her own faults would fade from significance:

Unveil Thy beauties to my sight,
That I may love Thee more. 
(488 RADIANCE)

The blessing of Thy grace impart,
And make me live to Thee.
(475 THANKFUL HEART)

O let me hear Thy blissful voice
Inspiring joys divine;
The barren desert shall rejoice
If only Thou art mine.
Thy presence, Lord, can cheer my heart
And raise my spirits high;
Thy smile can bid my pains depart
Though earthly comforts die.
(409 EXETER)

She even prays to God to overrule her own will, a wish to wish differently:

O turn us, turn us, mighty Lord,
By Thy resistless grace.
 (354t LEBANON)

The reasons for her awe and wonder: First, it is God’s beautiful creation, as she expresses in 138t ADORATION:

Lord, when my raptured thought surveys
Creation’s beauties o’er,
All nature joins to teach Thy praise,
And bid my soul adore.

Second, it is God’s providence over creation, as she expresses in 301 GREENLAND:

His steady counsels change the face
Of each declining year;
He bids the sun cut short his race
And wintry days appear³ .

On us His providence has shone,
With gentle shining rays.

Not only has God created a beautiful world, God continues to sustain it.

Third, she is grateful for God’s revelation in Scripture:

Thy glory o’er creation shines,
But in Thy sacred Word
I read in fairer, brighter lines
My bleeding, dying Lord.
(488 RADIANCE)

Now, she is very much aware of humanity’s fallen nature: our failures and our sins. But she is radiant at “the sweet hope” of God’s redemption of humanity through that “bleeding, dying Lord.” This is a hope that can carry her throughout her (suffering) life, as she expresses in 475 THANKFUL HEART:

Let the sweet hope that Thou art mine
My life and death attend;
Thy presence through my journey shine,
And crown my journey’s end.

This hope extends beyond this life (507 WOODLANDS):

Hope looks beyond the bounds of time,
When what we now deplore
Shall rise in full immortal prime
And bloom to fade no more.

In the end, I think that Anne Steele has an easy relationship with the ineffability of God. Perhaps she is naive to have such a relationship. Anne Steele, a single woman of the 18th century, considers an all-powerful, but loving deity. Encouraged by her friends, rather than slip into silence, she erects an altar of praise: the books of poetry she published in her lifetime. As the words to 569t EMMAUS say:

O may the sweet, the blissful theme
Fill ev’ry heart and tongue,
Till strangers love Thy charming name,
And join the sacred song.

God may be ineffable, but Anne Steele does what she can. It is, in fact, God’s greatness that prompts her praise and adoration. God’s care for her, despite and through her physical suffering, leads her to worship and adore, and “with rapture trace the wonders of Thy love² .”

We are perhaps more familiar with 32b DISTRESS and its mournful words:

So fades the lovely blooming flower,
Frail, smiling solace of an hour;
So soon our transient comforts fly,
And pleasure only blooms to die.

But the words that are repeated again and again in Steele’s poetry are God words like “Thee,” “Thy” and “Lord”; theological virtue words like “hope” and “love” and “grace”; and comforting words like “sweet” and, well, “comforts.” Anne Steele is not at a loss for words when considering the ineffable God. As Aalders writes, “Steele persisted in her efforts to compose hymns, and in so doing has put words in the mouths of many thousands of Christians—men and women, inarticulate and educated, confident and troubled by spiritual doubts.”

Program note

I think I will be taking the summer off from writing Vital Sparks essays. 

Appendix

Songs with Anne Steele’s texts. Bolded songs are new to the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp.

32b DISTRESS
54 RUSSELL
138t ADORATION
258 INSPIRATION
301 GREENLAND (verse 2)
316 NEW HOPE
323b KINGSWOOD
354t LEBANON
409 EXETER
475 A THANKFUL HEART
488 RADIANCE
494 HARRISON
507 WOODLANDS
511 THE GREAT REDEEMER (lines 1 and 2)
569t EMMAUS

In part one of this series, we looked at how the meanings of the words pitiful, awful, bowels, and conversation have drifted over the centuries, resulting in possible misunderstandings or even humor. In this article, we will look at a few more examples.

Paddle-to-the-Sea is still drifting

To begin with, I will discuss two grammatical examples (discussing grammar, of course, is a way to become popular, as we all know). The first came up in a discussion about a small change in the third printing of the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp, in which the following change was made to 161 SOUTHMINSTER in the second verse:

Hallelujah we sing
To the heaven’s high King

to:

Hallelujah we sing
To the heavens’ high King

Do you see it? The possessive apostrophe was moved in the word “heaven’s” to “heavens’.” This doesn’t result in a change in what we sing (that is, they sound alike). The thinking behind this change, I believe, is that the poem is referring to the high King of the heavens, not the high King of heaven — a slight semantic difference, perhaps, in that “heaven” refers to the abode of God, the angels, and the saints who have “gone on before,”, but “the heavens” refers to not only that but also to the skies and the celestial cosmos. In modern standard English, “heaven” doesn’t take a “the,” unlike (say) “the earth” and “the moon.” When I say, “modern standard English,” I don’t mean “correct English” necessarily, but what you might find in a style guide, such as The Chicago Manual of Style, which is the style guide used for the 2025 edition.

However, this wasn’t always the case, as Robert Vaughn pointed out to me. The King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, from the early seventeenth century, is full of examples of “the heaven” where today we would write “the heavens.” We can start with the very first verse: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Most modern translations use “the heavens.” It’s not clear to me when the translators of the KJV used “the heaven,” “heaven,” or “the heavens,” but they use all of these forms.

The second grammatical shift is from a song no longer in the 2025 edition: William Billings’s ROSE OF SHARON. It was pointed out to me by Timothy Morton.

Stay me with flagons,
Comfort me with apples,
For I am sick of love.

“Sick of love,” here means “sick because of love,” not “I am weary of love.” It is found twice in the King James Version, once directly quoted in Billings’s anthem (Song of Songs 2:5) and again in 5:8:

I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him,
that I am sick of love.

Timothy also pointed me to “feel the smart” in 296 SARDINIA and 430 ARBACOOCHEE. I wonder if “feel the smart,” meaning to feel pain, seems unnatural to a modern ear? I suppose so!

Behold the love, the generous love
That holy David shows;
Behold his kind compassion move
For his afflicted foes!
When they are sick, his soul complains
And seems to feel the smart;
The spirit of the gospel reigns,
And melts his pious heart.

To finish up, here’s a list of some other words that have undergone some kind of semantic drift. I’m sure there are more!

I’ve enjoyed thinking about this semantic changes, both large and small. I hope you have, too! As always, let me know your thoughts and corrections.

Singing from The Sacred Harp is somewhat countercultural. We sing these old songs, and compose new ones “in the style.” We sing these old hymn texts, as well. Anne Steele was an 18th century Dissenting Baptist. According to her biographer and collator, Samuel Duffield, who wrote in 1886, Steele “stands fourth or fifth in the list of contributors to English hymnody.” Yet even within Baptist circles, Steele’s lyrics are not often found in modern hymnals. But here is another way The Sacred Harp goes against the trend: The number of texts in the 2025 edition with words by Steele more than doubled from the 1991 edition There are now 15 songs with Steele’s words, up from six in the 1991 edition. She’s worth getting to know.

Steele was a birthright Particular Baptist; her father was the lay pastor of the local Baptist chapel; so was her uncle. She made a confession of faith at age 14. She was born in Broughton, Hampshire, England (1717); lived a single life with her family in Broughton; and died and was buried in Broughton (1778).

Anne Steele’s tomb, courtesy of Broughton Community Archive, Reference Number 00146.01, (CC-BY-NC-ND).

Unlike many women of her time, she received a good education. She was encouraged in her writing by her family, and her father considered her hymn texts good enough to be used for worship at the church. Throughout her life, she carried out a lively spiritual correspondence and wrote many poems and hymns. In her forties, she was encouraged to publish these, and two volumes were published, under the pen name “Theodosia,” meaning “gift of God.” She is considered to be the first widely published woman hymn writer. Forty-seven of her hymns, for example, were included in Rippon’s Selections.

Steele was often ill with “ague” (a chronic malaria) and apparently had a hip injury; her illnesses often influenced her writing. There are unfounded stories of her fiance drowning the night before their wedding, but it actually appears that she chose a single life to dedicate herself more fully to God. I have a sense that the difficulties in her life were not that uncommon for a person of her time and place, even though her life was relatively comfortable. She did live past sixty, after all.

I like this description of Steele’s writing:

In this essay, we will look at the theme of suffering in Steele’s poetry. Perhaps we can examine the notion of God’s ineffability, and Anne Steele’s poetic response, at another time. This essay is rather long as it is.

Consider the text we sing to 475 A THANKFUL HEART.

The words we sing are the concluding verses to a poem entitled, “Desiring Resignation and Thankfulness” in Sheppard’s collection. The first verse lays out her observation that life has both “thorns” and “flowers.”

Often I survey life’s varied scene, 
Amid the darkest hours, 
Sweet rays of comfort shine between, 
And thorns are mix’d with flowers. 

Observing this, she encourages herself:

And O, whate’er of earthly bliss 
Thy sovereign hand denies, 
Accepted at thy throne of grace, 
Let this petition rise:

And it is only then that makes her petition, which are the lyrics of our song.

Give me a calm, a thankful heart
From ev’ry murmur free;
The blessing of Thy grace impart,
And make me live to Thee.

Let the sweet hope that Thou art mine
My life and death attend;
Thy presence through my journey shine,
And crown my journey’s end.

Suffering is even more of a theme in the poem used for 32b DISTRESS. Its title is “To Amira on the death of her child.” Amira is the poetical pseudonym for Steele’s half sister, Mary. It’s devastating to realize the “lovely, blooming flower” that has faded is her dead niece. Here, I italicize the original words included in the 2025 edition:

So fades the lovely, blooming flower 
Frail, smiling solace of an hour!
So soon our transient comforts fly, 
And pleasure only blooms to die! 
To certain trouble we are born, 
Hope to rejoice, but sure to mourn. 
Ah wretched effort! sad relief, 
To plead necessity of grief! 
Is there no kind, no lenient art, 
To heal the anguish of the heart? 
To ease the heavy load of care, 
Which nature must, but cannot bear? 
Can reason’s dictates be obey'd? 
Too weak, alas, her strongest aid! 
O let religion then be nigh, 
Her comforts were not made to die; 
Her powerful aid supports the soul, 
And nature owns her kind control; 
While she unfolds the sacred page, 
Our fiercest griefs resign their rage. 
Then gentle patience smiles on pain, 
And dying hope revives again; 
Hope wipes the tear from sorrow’s eye, 
And faith points upward to the sky; 
The promise guides her ardent flight, 
And joys unknown to sense invite, 
Those blissful regions to explore, 
Where pleasure blooms to fade no more. 

I find it interestingly that the second half of verse two is changed from this poem: 

Spirit of grace, be ever nigh;
Thy comforts are not made to die.

Our book (and others) change the text slightly to make it a song of prayer. The original is a declaration that only religion, not reason, will provide the solace we need. We have a promise that the blooms of life will no longer fade, but that earthly sorrow replaced by the ardent, sensual joys of the “blissful regions” of heaven.

Several other songs in the 2025 edition take up the theme of sorrow, not just of death (323b KINGSWOOD, 507 WOODLANDS), but also of human fecklessness and error, as in 354t LEBANON:

How changed, alas, are truths divine,
For error, guilt, and shame!
What impious numbers, bold in sin,
Disgrace the holy Christian name!

Steele writes in hope, of course; her trust is in the powerful God of salvation, not fickle humans:

O turn us, turn us, mighty Lord,
By Thy resistless grace;
Then shall our hearts obey Thy word,
And humbly we shall seek Thy face.

But I want to note that, in the end, Anne Steele, having looked deeply at the pains and sorrows of life, remains content and trusting in God. No life is easy, and Steele surely did not protect herself from the pains and sorrows in the lives she held dear. She had a God, and a community, and she was content.

Note: A version of this article can be found as a Google document, containing more footnotes and references, which were lost when copying over to beehive.

Appendix

Epitaph

Here is a transcription of Anne Steele’s tombstone:

Anne Steele Daughter of M. William Steele
Dyed Nov^br , 11^th , 1778, Aged 61 Years and 6 Months.
Silent the Lyre, and dumb the tuneful Tongue,
That sung on Earth her Great Redeemer’s Praise,
But now in Heav’n, she joins th’ Angelic Song,
In more Harmonious more exalted Lays.

Anne Steele’s songs in The Sacred Harp

Bolded songs are new to the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp.

32b DISTRESS
54 RUSSELL
138t ADORATION
258 INSPIRATION
301 GREENLAND (verse 2)
316 NEW HOPE
323b KINGSWOOD
354t LEBANON
409 EXETER
475 A THANKFUL HEART
488 RADIANCE
494 HARRISON
507 WOODLANDS
511 THE GREAT REDEEMER (lines 1 and 2)
569t EMMAUS

Robert Bateman, The Pool of Bethesda

On Facebook, in the Sacred Harp Friends group, I asked the question, “What songs do you sing when you feel like you’re in desperate straights for whatever reason?” Of course, I meant “desperate straits,” but people understood what I meant (and corrected my misspelling kindly). I got lots of good answers, which did not surprise me at all.

The playlist: Songs for Desperate Straits

This is the human condition: we are “born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” We are beset with trials and distresses of all sorts: by illnesses, by our weakness and moral failures, by enemies both personal and national. What can we do? 

When I began to sing — twenty years ago, and heading into my fifties — I was most aware that people chose songs that were meaningful when they were in the midst of grave illness. The prototype for this is 86 POLAND:

God of my life, look gently down,
Behold the pains I feel.

In the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp, 481t MILLBROOK was added; a song that many people hoped and expected would be added to the book. The words by Charles Wesley retell the story of how Jesus healed a man who had waited beside a “healing pool” for 38 years (John 5:1-15).

How long, Thou faithful God, shall I
Here in Thy ways forgotten lie?
When shall the means of healing be
The channels of Thy grace to me?

Sinners on ev’ry side step in,
And wash away their pain and sin;
But I, a helpless sin-sick soul,
Still lie expiring at the pool.

Thou seest me lying at the pool;
I would, Thou know’st, I would be whole;
O let the troubled waters move,
And minister Thy healing love.

John Newton also retells this story; 34t GOSPEL POOL has these words: 

Beside the gospel pool,
Appointed for the poor,
From time to time my helpless soul
Has waited for a cure.

But whither can I go?
There is no other pool
Where streams of sov’reign virtue flow
To make a sinner whole.

(Two other related traditional versions of “Beside the Gospel Pool” are this Primitive Baptist version and a version by Lucy M. Outerbridge. Both are well worth a listen.)

But there are other ways to approach illness. One is simply to lament (the first verse of 47b IDUMEA):

And am I born to die?
To lay this body down?
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown?

Another is to meditate of the agony of Christ, who “hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4; 1 Peter 2:24), as in the words to 210 LENA (by Joseph Hart):

See the Lord of glory dying!
See Him gasping! hear Him crying!
See His burdened bosom heave!

And yet another is mock our fear, as in Charles Wesley’s 270 CONFIDENCE:

Away, my unbelieving fear;
Fear shall in me no more have place;
My Savior doth not yet appear;
He hides the brightness of His face;

But shall I therefore let Him go,
And basely to the tempter yield?
No, in the strength of Jesus, no!
I never will give up my shield.

We can remind ourselves that we are always within God’s “circling power” (472 AKIN, or 315 IMMENSITY, with words by Isaac Watts).

Within Thy circling pow’r I stand,
On ev’ry side I find Thy hand;
Awake, asleep, at home, abroad,
I am surrounded still with God.

God, in “almighty love” has sworn a “solemn oath” to “shower salvation down,” writes Isaac Watts (to which William Billings set 178t AFRICA), and so:

Why do we then indulge our fears,
Suspicions and complaints?
Is He a God, and shall His grace
Grow weary of His saints? 

And we can remember that our Redeemer lives, as Samuel Medley writes, and will kill death itself (277 ANTIOCH):

He lives to crush the fiends of hell, Glory, hallelujah!
He lives and doth within me dwell, Glory, hallelujah!

Jeremiah asked, “Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?” (Jer 8:22), and the spiritual refrain used in 223 BALM IN GILEAD answers in the affirmative:

There’s balm in Gilead
To cure a sin-sick soul;
There’s balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole.

“There is a Balm in Gilead” is one of the earliest songs recorded; The Fisk Singers recorded it in 1909. The chorus lyrics above are probably from William Glass in his Revivalist songbook.

This is a lot so far! And there are plenty more songs to come. Let me declare this as part 1. More to come, God willing.

Thanks to Stacey Berkheimer, Vella Dailey, Alison Fisher, Judy Getrich, James Harvey, Bill Hogan, John Hutchinson, Sharon Kermiet, Idy Kiser, Luc Kleiner, Emma Korn, Hannah Land, Jesse Latimer, Susan Cherones Lee, Elyllsa Lloyd, Jinx McGuire, Larua McMurray, Brady Santoro, Rowan Simms, Rachel Speer, Caro Stamm-Reusch, John Stoltz, Fynn Titford-Mock, Nancy Vda, Sarah Ward, Mary Jane Wilkie, and Lu Zeng for suggesting songs.

A timorous worm

Ash Wednesday, 2026.

One of our local singer boasts a pin: It says “Tim’rous worms”, but overlaid with the international safety symbol for “No!” It, of course, references the Isaac Watts poem set in 111b TO DIE NO MORE and 275b ROLL ON:

Why should we start and fear to die?
What tim’rous worms we mortals are!
Death is the gate of endless joy,
And yet we dread to enter there.

The pin is a joke, of course. We joke about what we are uncomfortable about, and perhaps about ideas that we find outmoded. In this essay, written as a Lenten meditation, I would like you to pause and consider: what if worm theology is not ridiculous, but perhaps an accurate, if unflattering, description of the human condition?

There is no lack of references to worms in the theology and poetry of Isaac Watts. In our book alone, we quote four different poems in eight different songs. There are, I believe, 30 mentions in his Hymns and Spiritual Songs out of (I think) 365 hymns — practically, one mention per every ten hymns. It’s clearly an important image for Watts. What does he mean by it?

The good God creates a good universe

In his hymn on Genesis 1, entitled “The creation of the world,” Watts declares the goodness of God’s creation:

Thus glorious in the Maker's eye
The young creation stood;
He saw the building from on high,
His word pronounced it good.

That creation consisted of, among other things, the birth of “the lion and the worm,” that is, both apex predators and waste scavengers. They are part of the great creative act of God, who created the “spacious world,” the “moon and stars in order”, the sea, “herbs and plants,” fish and fowl, “grazing beasts”, and humanity itself. In his hymn, “The book of God’s decrees,” we are reminded that God orders all things, even lowly worms:

There's not a sparrow or a worm
But's found in his decrees.

Death, decay, and humility

As waste scavengers, worms are present at death and decay. Discussing worms act as a memento mori and a call to humility. In his hymn for Sermon 23, he writes:

What if we wear the richest vest, 
Peacocks and flies are better drest: 
This flesh, with all its gaudy forms, 
Must drop to dust and feed the worms. 

This echoes Job 17:14:

I have said to corruption, Thou art my father:
to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister.

This basic fact of the human condition should lead us to a stance of humility. In his Sermon 41, he calls us “poor dying mushrooms”: 

Death makes equals of us all, and remembering this is rule number 1 of “Rules to subdue pride and scorn” from his Doctrine of the Passions. “Shall a little finer house or finer clothes make a worm vain among his fellow worms and tempt him to scorn his kindred?” No, of course. Watts continues:

None of your vain distinctions in this life shall attend you to the judgment seat. Keep this tribunal in view, and pride will wither and hang down its head.

The pleasures of God are immensely greater than the pleasure of the world

This attitude of humility frees us from attachment to worldly pleasures and social advancement. The poem behind 55 CONVERSE is a very important poem, I think, for understanding Watts and his changing motivation for writing. I have placed the complete poem, Converse with Christ, elsewhere, but here are two verses, the first and the last. Only the first verse is in The Sacred Harp.

I’m tired of visits, modes and forms,
And flatt’ries paid to fellow worms;
Their conversation cloys,
Their vain amours and empty stuff,
But I can ne’er enjoy enough
Of Thy best company, my Lord, Thou life of all my joys.

Fly from my thoughts all humane things,
And sporting swains and fighting kings,
And tales of wanton love:
My soul disdains that little snare
The tangles of Amira's Hair;
Thine arms, my God, are sweeter bands,  nor can my heart remove.

We can see Watts, practically in real time, deciding against a life of an 18-century man of letters towards a life lived for God. Compared to the “sweeter bands” of divine love, the vain flatteries paid to respectable men like the man he could be are like compliments paid to worms. Although, of course, Watts went on to write influential books on philosophy, logic, and theology, he primarily saw himself (as evidenced by his self-written epitaph) as a pastor. The poetry of his that we sing was written for ordinary people. When you consider the great English poets he knew or knew about — people like Pope, Milton, and Dryden — to consider himself and them as “fellow-worms” is humorous, but also pointedly and sincerely meant. 

Our sinful wretchedness

As we have seen, the image of human vermicularity indicates that we are creatures vastly inferior in power, knowledge, and beauty to God our creator. Furthermore, we die and decay, unlike God’s own eternal life. We must also understand ourselves as vastly inferior in our goodness. I think is where our minds go when we first read or sing the worms “such a worm as I.” In one of Watts’s sermons, he talks about how Jesus, “that illustrious Friend” ransoms us, calling us worms but also rebels that deserve to die. This pairing certainly indicates that we are sinful creatures in need of rescue — a very common theme in Watts’s writing. I find it interesting, though, Watts generally use of worm to describe the human condition as lowly and frail creatures rather than evil creatures. After all, worms are not evil! They are part of God’s creatures.

One of Watts’s most famous poems is used three times in The Sacred Harp (290 VICTORIA, 310 WEEPING SAVIOR, and 375 LOVE THE LORD):

Alas! and did my Savior bleed?
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?

Watts entitled this poem “Godly sorrow arising from the sufferings of Christ,” and it certainly picks up on the theme of the gap in goodness between God and us, for he writes, “Was it for crimes that I had done / He groaned upon the tree?” and we blush and grieve. But Watts’s true focus, I think, is on the “Amazing pity! grace unknown! / And love beyond degree!” That is, Watts writes this poem to focus our own attention on God’s love for us: “God the mighty Maker died / for man the creature’s sin,” and also on our response to that love of gratitude and obedience: “Here, Lord, I give myself away, / ‘Tis all that I can do.”

Christ so identifies with us that he dies a death like ours. In his love for us, he lives a human life, and dies a human death. His death atones for our sinfulness: “atonement,” etymologically, comes from God’s “at-one-ment” with us. For the believer, his death (and resurrection) reconciles us with God. Watts surely had in mind Psalm 22, which Christians have read as pointing to Christ’s death since the earliest days of the church:

1 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
2 O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not;
and in the night season, and am not silent.
3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
4 Our fathers trusted in thee:
they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered:
they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
6 But I am a worm, and no man;
a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

Jesus quotes this psalm as he dies on the cross, and it’s significant that in the chorus of 310 WEEPING SAVIOR we sing:

Oh, come, sinner, you will hear
The Savior say, “Weep not for me”;
See the Savior on the cross!
Oh, sinner, hear Him cry,
“Eloi, Eloi,
Lama sabachthani!”

Those last two lines are just the first line of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” in Aramaic.

Conclusion

Honestly, I don’t know if it’s ok to chuckle a bit when we sing “tim’rous worms” or “fellow-worms.” The image of our lowly creatureliness is so much richer than a cheap jab at our ancestors’ language. It certainly can make us feel uncomfortable to be reminded of our physical, mental, and moral limits, and so it’s easier to joke. Such a vain, worm-like thing to do, in fact.

Watts in his Miscellaneous Thoughts tells a story of a man, Theophron, sitting by a fire: “by chance, he cast his eye on a worm which was lodged on the safer end of a short firebrand; it seemed very uneasy at its warm station, writhing and stretching itself every way for relief.” It’s not so great to be a worm on the end of burning stick. Such a worm, left to its own devices, will be unable to escape its fate. We are, of course, the worm in this story.

Theophron reflects:

As I said, I write this as a Lenten meditation. Our modern sensibilities tell us to avoid thinking ourselves as worms. But let me suggest recognizing our lowly creatureliness frees us to recognizing our true state: a lowly, but good creation of a good God, but brought even lower by our own choices. Away with low things! The dying Christ comes near to us in our lowliness, and brings us through the gate to endless joy. Why, indeed, should we start and fear to die?

Judge Jackson

Judge Jackson was a Black Sacred Harp singer, composer, educator, and lyricist who published his own shape note tunebook, The Colored Sacred Harp, in 1934. The conception, development, and publication of this book was a remarkable feat. Judge Jackson was a remarkable man.

Jackson’s story is well told in Joe Dan Boyd’s Judge Jackson and The Colored Sacred Harp, which also describes the reception history of Jackson’s tunebook. Jesse P. Karsberg’s dissertation, Folklore’s Filter: Race, Place, and Sacred Harp Singing does a good job of describing how Jackson’s work has been treated by researchers of the shape note tradition. I don’t think anyone, however, has looked with particular scholarly attention to the lyrics Jackson provided for his compositions in The Colored Sacred Harp. In this essay, I will pay some attention, and leave it up to the scholars to furnish a more complete story.

Jackson wrote the plurality of the tunes in The Colored Sacred Harp, and arranged or added parts to several others. I will focus here on the tunes he himself composed. I think the lyrics fall into three main categories: texts from the Cooper book edition of The Sacred Harp, texts from other books, and lyrics he wrote himself. The Colored Sacred Harp follows the structure and layout of The Sacred Harp, with one important exception. In The Sacred Harp, the poet or source of the lyrics is found in the upper-left corner of the song. But, in The Colored Sacred Harp, that space seems to be used to cite the musical arranger of the song. For example, the first song in the book, 3 AM I A SOLDIER OF THE CROSS, the composer is listed as “J. Jackson” (meaning Judge Jackson) in the usual location: the upper-right corner. But, in the upper-left corner, rather than citing Isaac Watts as the poet, it says “J. J.,” indicating, I believe, that Jackson arranged his tune with bass, treble, and alto parts. This is explicit in 4 PROSPERITY, where the composer is listed as “H. Webster Wood,” but in the upper-left corner, it says, “Bass, Alto and Treble by J. J.” This makes it somewhat difficult to definitively assign texts to Jackson. Provisionally, I have assigned him as the poet for any song which is not found in the The Sacred Harp or other published sources.

Perhaps the best known tune by Jackson is 87 FLORIDA STORM, which tells the story of the 1926 hurricane that hit Miami. It’s a very unusual and very moving story ballad. It’s unusual in that such specific stories are not found elsewhere in The Sacred Harp tradition. It’s so moving because it describes the devastation of the hurricane, and how the storm affected white and Black folk in an equally devastating manner.

September eighteenth, nineteen hundred and twenty-six,
The people cried mercy in the storm,
Their cries were too late, their crying was in vain,
Crying Lord have mercy, in the storm.

[chorus]

The people cried mercy in the storm,
The people cried mercy in the storm,
The colored and the white stayed awake all the night,
Crying Lord have mercy in the storm.

A pity and a shame all the people in the rain,
But God show'd His mercy in the storm,
It was very sad that they lost all they had,
Crying Lord have mercy in the storm.

The wind with a mighty sound laid many buildings down,
But God show'd His mercy in the storm,
Night comes on you know they had nowhere to go,
Crying Lord have mercy in the storm.

The streets were all a mess it was so no one could pass,
Mothers looked for children in the storm,
Fathers tried in vain it was a shame I know,
Crying Lord have mercy in the storm.

The doctors got the news so many that were bruised,
Together with the Red Cross on the train,
They all came in haste to see about their case,
Crying Lord have mercy in the storm.

According to Boyd, this poem was written by Frank Spencer, who is otherwise unknown: a broadside sheet was found among Jackson’s papers with Spencer’s name as the author. This poem is not one of Jackson’s creation, although Boyd says “Jackson selected five stanzas which appealed to him and rewrote them slightly to conform to the tune’s metrical requirements.” 

Based on my count, Jackson wrote the lyrics to eight tunes. He definitely wrote the lyrics to 19 MY MOTHER’S GONE (also now published in the Cooper book as 519, with the same name), because this is one of the rare times when the author of the words are explicitly mentioned: “Words arranged by J. Jackson, Ozark Ala., December 26, 1904. set to music August 26, 1927.” As you can see, Jackson could be meticulous in recording when he created his music. The lyric is a camp meeting style song, with an easily changeable phrase at each stanza.

I have a father (mother, brother, sister) way in glory,
One by one we’ll gather home.

[chorus]

Gathering, gathering,
One by one we’ll gather home;
Gathering, gathering,
One by one we’ll gather home.

The last stanza changes the whole first line, however, which is somewhat unusual. It looks to the return of Christ and the last judgment:

When Christ will say, “Well done,” my brother,
One by one we’ll gather home.

The rest of Jackson’s lyrics in The Colored Sacred Harp—that is, the ones I believe he wrote—are interesting because they tend to be rather free-flowing in their texts and rhymes, unlike most strophic songs in the Sacred Harp tradition. For example, consider 54 JESUS CALLS FOR THEE:

In this world below there’s sin you know
But Jesus calls for thee.
In the walk of life there’s care and woe, 
But Jesus calls for thee, 
Just now yes He calls.

[chorus]

But Jesus calls for thee to come,
Hear him calling for thee to come just now.
His loving sweet voice calling, pleading for you now,
I will give you rest.
In the walk of life there’s care and woe,
But Jesus calls for thee, 
Just now yes He calls.

In this world of sin there’s work to do,
But Jesus calls for thee.
In this life you know there is trouble
But Jesus calls for thee, 
Just now yes He calls.

There is a rhyme in the first verse (know/woe), but that’s not carried over to the second verse. The chorus is longer than a stanza, another unusual choice. But the words flow freely, and there is a kind of semantic rhyme in Jackson’s words, repeating and emphasizing his theme. Jesus calls or pleads in almost every line of the chorus, promising rest from the sin, from care and woe, and from the trouble of this present life. 

78 I LOVE TO THINK OF JESUS is perhaps best considered an anthem, and, so, the freely flowing words are a bit more in keeping with the general Sacred Harp tradition. But like 54 JESUS CALLS FOR THEE, there is an often repeated theme, in this case the love of Jesus that causes the believer to sing:

I love to think of Jesus the bless Savior dear,
I love to talk of His dear name and praise Him day by day.
Sing His praise all along as you journey here,
Jesus calls for us all, praise the Savior’s name,
Praising Jesus, praising Jesus, praise Him day by day.

I’ll praise the Lord from day to day and sing of Jesus’ love,
Sing how He came and died for all, yes died that we might live.
Praise the Lord, I am free,
Yes I love to be with Him for my needs He can supply,
Yes, I love to sing His praise along this pilgrim way.

Shout and sing, shout and sing, sing of Jesus’ love.

Let me look at one more of his poems, 84b GATES OF MERCY. Here, the topic is an invitation to us to return to God, but that the “gates of mercy may close,” so the listener should not delay in accepting God’s invitation:

Dear friend, you are still wondering from God,
But still He is calling for you to come.
Yes, He is ready to forgive,
Oh, yes, the gates of mercy may close.

[chorus]

Oh, yes, the gates of mercy may close,
O, soul, don’t wait ’til it is too late,
Oh, yes, the gates of mercy may close.

Yes, death will the reward of your way,
Still you are walking in that downward road,
If you repent, Christ will forgive,
Oh, yes, the gates of mercy may close.

Think of the loved ones gone on before you,
Are waiting to welcome your coming home,
O, Lord, on Thee I’ll put my trust,
Oh, yes, the gates of mercy may close.

The Lord invites you to come to Him now,
Soon the time is past and it is no more,
Oh, will you hear the Savior’s voice,
Oh, yes, the gates of mercy may close.

Judge Jackson is rightly recognized as a significant composer in his own right, but also as a man who was able to publish his own tunebook. I think he’s also worth considering as a Christian lyricist, who wrote a lovely camp meeting song that made it into the Cooper version of The Sacred Harp. But he also wrote freely flowing lyrics on some of the standard themes of the Christian religion, including God’s invitation and call to us, the beauty of God and a concomitant desire to sing God’s praise, the promise of heaven, and the coming judgment. I hope you have found this introduction to Judge Jackson’s poetry a taste of his work, and consider attending a singing where The Colored Sacred Harp is used. I attended the so-called Rotunda Singing at the Alabama State Archives this past weekend for the second time, and I hope to be able to continue to make it an annual visit.

I want to write about 335 RETURN AGAIN:

Rudbeckia from Bess’s garden

Savior, visit Thy plantation;
Grant us Lord, a gracious rain.
All will come to desolation,
Unless Thou return again.

I want to write about 335 RETURN AGAIN, but I first have to discuss the word, “plantation,” although I’m not particularly eager to do so. I have heard it said that some do not want to sing this song because of the use of the word. Although, I, personally, haven’t seen anyone suggest this, have only heard claims that others do. Since there are few activities so voluntary as Sacred Harp singing, there’s no problem here: just don’t sing it. But it might be worth understanding the background a little bit more.

Given the previous essay on “semantic drift” in the texts of The Sacred Harp, it’s definitely in my bailiwick to talk about this. So, first a bit of a digression before I get to the heart of this essay, which, to be honest, will be a fairly plain and modest one. An AI-based analysis of a sample of 1000 uses of “plantation” in the Corpus of Contemporary American English notes that, although this word is used in various contexts, the majority of uses refer to the plantations of the antebellum South and Caribbean, chattel slavery, and slavery’s legacy in the U.S. More neutral uses often describe large monocrop farming estates of the present and past: sugar, coffee, cotton, rice, pine, banana, pineapple, and so forth—even marijuana plantations. Searches on the New York Times and Fox News websites are similar; in all cases, they also reference place names (Plantation, Florida, for example) and sometimes historical locations and tourist sites (Plimoth Plantation, Monticello, Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, and so forth). And, of course, the political discourse around the use of the term “plantation.”

What I find interesting, as someone who has worked as a lexicographer, is that the meanings of plantation as either an estate where enslaved people work or large monocrop estates only rarely show up in dictionaries. Merriam-Webster’s defines plantation as a large group of plants under cultivation or the place where such plants are grown, or a settlement in a new country or region. The American Heritage definition is similar. Both note that the plantation often has “resident workers.” Only The Century Dictionary, from the turn of the last century, offers a definition more closely aligned with the current, modern use.

This poem is from John Newton’s Olney Hymns, and was first published in 1779. Of course, Newton worked on slave ships and as an investor in the slave trade, although he later became an abolitionist. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, published roughly contemporaneously with Olney Hymns, does not include the large estate meaning of plantation, and treats it roughly as a synonym of “planting.” And this general sense of a “planting” is what Newton is trying to evoke. So, without making a fuss, I want to turn to the poem as a whole, and explore its imagery.

The 2025 edition has two verses and a chorus (which is not present in Olney Hymns):

Savior, visit Thy plantation;
Grant us Lord, a gracious rain.
All will come to desolation,
Unless Thou return again.

Keep no longer at a distance;
Shine upon us from on high.
Lest for want of Thy assistance,
Ev’ry plant should droop and die.

Lord, revive us! Lord, revive us!
All our help must come from Thee.

Newton entitled this, his Hymn 51, “A prayer for revival.” Here are the remaining verses:

Surely, once thy garden flourished,
Every part looked gay and green;
Then thy word our spirits nourished,
Happy seasons we have seen!

But a drought has since succeeded,
And a sad decline we see;
LORD, thy help is greatly needed,
Help can only come from thee.

Where are those we counted leaders,
Filled with zeal, and love, and truth?
Old professors, tall as cedars,
Bright examples to our youth!

Some, in whom we once delighted,
We shall meet no more below;
Some, alas! we fear are blighted,
Scarce a single leaf they show.

Younger plants–the sight how pleasant,
Covered thick with blossoms stood;
But they cause us grief at present,
Frosts have nipped them in the bud!

Dearest Savior, hasten hither,
Thou canst make them bloom again;
O, permit them not to wither,
Let not all our hopes be vain!

Let our mutual love be fervent,
Make us prevalent in prayers;
Let each one esteemed thy servant,
Shun the world’s bewitching snares:

Break the tempter’s fatal power,
Turn the stony heart to flesh;
And begin, from this good hour,
To revive thy work afresh.

Newton’s image is of a small, cultivated garden. It is a lament and a plea for the renewal of the church, which is in danger of becoming, once again, a desolate wilderness unless Christ tends to it. It needs the renewing rain and sunshine of God to be restored and revived.

As is often the case in such poetry, Newton looks back to a time when things were better: “Surely, once thy garden flourished.” He laments the drought that has occurred, which he describes in three verses. First, there has been a failure in leadership (“Where are those we counted leaders?”). Second, many people have left or become lifeless (“Some … we shall meet no more below” and “Some … are blighted.”). Third, the younger people in the congregation, the “younger plants,” have become “nipped … in the bud” by spiritual frost.

He turns to the church itself, calling it to fervent mutual love, to prevalent prayer, and to shun worldly snares. Finally, he returns to call on God to revive God’s work, breaking the power of the devil, and softening the hearts of the church.

I have been continuing in my research on Isaac Watts’s congregation, Bury Street. It started small, in the days of persecution of the dissenting churches, and in the second generation or so, first joined with another congregation, but was declining when Watts was called. In a few years, the membership swelled under Watts and his co-pastor, Samuel Price, and I imagine this felt like an answer to a prayer for revival. After Watts died, the church seemed to flourish well enough under Price. But the church petered out after the death of another pastor, Samuel Chase, and (I think) closed its doors about 100 years after its founding. I can easily imagine the congregation singing Newton’s lyrics, hoping for a revival of the salad days under Watts.

But, speaking of Watts, this text reminds me of his hymn “The Church, the garden of Christ” from The Psalms of David. This is set to MUSGROVE in The Shenandoah Harmony with its first two verses:

We are a garden walled around,
Chosen and made peculiar ground;
A little spot enclosed by grace
Out of the world's wide wilderness.

Like trees of myrrh and spice we stand
Planted by God the Father's hand; 
And all his springs in Sion flow
To make the young plantation grow.

This is a much more optimistic view of the church, based on Song of Songs 4:12-15, where the bride (prefiguring, to Watts, the church) is compared to a fragrant, well-watered garden:

A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard,
Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices:
A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.

We get a similar image in the poetry in 64 NASHVILLE and 284 GARDEN HYMN, which uses imagery from the Garden of Eden and John 15, I believe:

The Lord into His garden comes,
The spices yield a rich perfume,
The lilies grow and thrive;
Refreshing showers of grace divine
From Jesus flow to every vine,
And make the dead revive.

64 NASHVILLE uses water imagery, too:

O that this dry and barren ground
In springs of water may abound,
A fruitful soil become;
The desert blossoms as the rose,
While Jesus conquers all His foes
And makes His people one.

Sometimes, we are in need of revival, as individuals, or in our churches or other institutions. We may remember times of plenty, and desire a return to that. Singing “Lord, revive us! Lord, revive us!” can be our prayer. Sometimes, we can simply enjoy what has been given to us, even in a dangerous, frightening world, and we can declare we are in “a little spot, enclosed by grace.” Sometimes, we are enamored by the presence of Christ and feel the “refreshing showers of grace divine,” and can “taste the sweetness of his word” and “in Jesus’ ways go on.”

Update: 2025-01-17. Corrected to note 64 NASHVILLE contains water imagery, not 284 GARDEN HYMN.

From M.J. Grant Auld Lang Syne: A Song and its Culture

It’s nearly New Year’s Eve, and what would New Year’s Eve be without Auld Lang Syne?In standard English, we sing:

Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?

(Chorus) For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne.

And in Robert Burns’s original Scots version:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?

(Chorus) For auld lang syne, my jo, for auld lang syne,
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet, for auld lang syne.

There is a very good book that will tell you more than you need to know about Auld Lang Syne. It’s by M.J. Grant, and called Auld Lang Syne: A Song and its Culture, published by OpenBook Publishers and freely available on their website.

It traces the origins of the words and tunes (yes, tunes) for ALS, and its slightly murky past. The tune to which ALS is usually sung is the second tune proposed by Burns, and its melody is essentially the melody that we know from The Sacred Harp as 162 PLENARY (in both the 2025 edition, and the 2012 Cooper Book edition). This tune was first published, in 1799, in George Thomson’s Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice^[1][2].

But the text present in The Sacred Harp comes from an Isaac Watts poem entitled “A funeral thought” from his 1707 Hymns and Spiritual Songs (Book 2, number 68). The 2025 edition and the Cooper book have just the first three verses^[3]:

1 Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound,
My ears attend the cry,
"Ye living men, come view the ground
Where you must shortly lie.”

2 "Princes, this clay must be your bed,
In spite of all your towers;
The tall, the wise, the reverend head
Must lie as low as ours."

3 Great God, is this our certain doom?
And are we still secure?
Still walking downward to our tomb,
And yet prepare no more?

4 Grant us the powers of quickening grace
To fit our souls to fly,
Then, when we drop this dying flesh,
We'll rise above the sky.

This is a memento mori song, which we discussed in the last issue of Vital Sparks. It reminds us that we all will die, whether we be a prince, or strong, or wise, or holy, or just our own sorrowful selves. “Come view the ground where you must shortly lie:” the grave. Only God’s grace can enliven our dead souls so that, at the moment our bodies drop into the tomb, we might “rise above the sky.”

Makers of The Sacred Harp state that the pairing of this tune and text occurs in the 1839 second edition of Andrew W. Johnson's The American Harmony, arranged by an A.C. Clark, who might have been a relative (by marriage) to William Walker^[4]. In any case, it shows up in Walker’s Southern Harmony and Musical Companion^[5]. No doubt this is how it enters The Sacred Harp; it’s in the first edition, and has been in every edition since.

Why did Clark pair this text with this tune? Auld Lang Syne was well-known on both sides of the Atlantic by the time of his arrangement. Obviously, we can never know for sure, but I think the answer lies in the very popularity of Auld Lang Syne. Although the Burns text was very strongly associated with this tune, the tune itself was used in many ways. Grant’s book details the reception of this tune, both with these words and with various parodies and contrafacta. He lists, for example, seven texts in one book, The Universal Songster, from 1829 and 1834 that suggest they be sung to this air. These range from humorous parodies (“Should brandy ever be forgot for port or cherry wine?”) to serious parody (“Should lovers’ joys be e’er forgot, Or ever out of mind?”) to full-blown contrafacta (“My wife she died three months ago, And left poor I to moan”).

I first encountered the ubiquity of Auld Lang Syne when looking through a Republican songster published for Lincoln’s presidential campaign. I’m not sure exactly which one I first saw, but here is one from 1860:

All hail! ye friends of Liberty,
Ye honest sons of toil;
Come, let us raise a shout to-day
For Freedom and Free Soil.

Lowell Mason even did a version in his Juvenile Songster in 1837. He wrote an arrangement called, Auld Lang Syne at School, with the words starting “Shall school acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind.”

So, I think it was natural for Clark to select this popular tune for arrangement, and to find a fitting text. The association of Auld Lang Syne with New Year’s celebration (or the Scottish analog, Hogmanay) doesn’t reach full strength, at least in the United States, until the 1880s or so, according to Grant. I don’t think this is the specific reason for this text. The 1820 Missouri Harmony set Watts’s text to a minor plain tune called FUNERAL THOUGHT, and the 1867 New Harp of Columbia uses Watts’s text for a minor fuge called NEW DURHAM.

The association of Burns’s text, the tune Auld Lang Syne, and New Year’s celebration is extremely strong these days. This is oddly borne out by looking at the minutes of Sacred Harp singings from 1995-2024. PLENARY is led 1.6 times as often in December, and 2.7 times as often in January, compared to the average number of times it is led per month — similar to other seasonality trends we see for Christmas songs in December, for example^[6]. There’s an old joke, probably lost on the younger generation, that a real classical music lover can listen to Rimsky-Korsakov's “Flight of the Bumblebee” without thinking of the Green Hornet. Perhaps a real Sacred Harp singer is one who can sing the words to PLENARY and think on their own mortality, and not think of Auld Lang Syne.

Bonus material

In looking at various books, I discovered a tune called HYMN FOR THE NEW YEAR in the 1846 The Missouri Harmony, on pages 18-19, and available on Internet Archive.

^[1] I think this antedates Makers of The Sacred Harp’s date for this collection, which refers to an 1802 edition.

^[2] Interesting side note: Ignaz Pleyel, of 143 PLEYEL’S HYMN SECOND, did arrangements for the Select Collection, as did Beethoven.

^[3] There’s a subtle difference between the punctuation of the 2025 edition and the 2012 Cooper book edition. I’ll leave it as a fun exercise to the reader to find it, and which one seems closer to Watts’s intent.

^[4] I haven’t seen a scan of the song in this edition. I’m sure Makers is correct that the song appears there; I’m assuming that it is with the Watts text and is called PLENARY. Warren Steel noted on Fasola Discussions the possible connection between Walker and Clark; Steel quotes J.S. James.

^[5] Walker’s version had only three parts; I assume Clark’s did as well. Minne Floyd supplied an alto part in the 1902 edition of the Cooper book.

^[6] It’s probably worth its own essay at some point, but I calculated such anomalies and present them in Seasonality of songs led from The Sacred Harp, 1995-2024.

Saint Jerome Writing, by Caravaggio

In “Behold the smiling, happy land,” I started to look at the secular songs in The Sacred Harp, noting that the book’s lyrics are so overwhelmingly Christian, that it’s easy to overlook the secular songs. We looked at patriotic songs (such as 137 LIBERTY) and sentimental ballads (such as 359 BRIDE’S FAREWELL). Let’s look at some other secular songs, and answer two questions: Should we count 1991 edition’s 254 ROSE OF SHARON as a secular song? And: Is the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp more secular than the 1991 edition?

Memento mori songs

Sometimes when people ask me what is different about Sacred Harp singing, I tell them that we sing about death a lot. Death and religion make a good pairing, as in (as one of many examples) 418 REES:

There is a house not made with hands,
Eternal and on high;
And here my spirit waiting stands,
Till God shall bid it fly.

But there are a number of songs in The Sacred Harp which don’t explicitly mention God, or other Christian beliefs and practices, which I will unremarkably call memento mori songs, Latin for “Remember, you must die.” This is a practice that predates the Christian movement; for example Plato quotes Socrates in The Phaedo as saying, “the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.” The list is a relatively long one, but consider one, 130 THE OLD GRAVEYARD, which is new to the 2025 edition:

Former friends, oh, how I’ve sought them,
Just to cheer my drooping mind;
But they’ve gone, like leaves of autumn,
Driv’n before a dreary wind.

Boast ye not of tomorrow,
For you know not what the day may bring.

Death has laid them down to slumber;
Solemn thought to think that I
Soon will be one of that number,
Soon, ah soon, with them to lie.

A solemn thought indeed! As I grow older, I naturally have known many people who have died, and this is a constant reminder that I, too, will soon “be of that number.” Of course, as a Christian, I can sing this with hope, both for myself and others; and as a warning, as in 522 YE HEEDLESS ONES:

Ye heedless ones who wildly stroll,
The grave will soon become your bed.

Or 

Let’s live so in youth that we blush not in age.

As 136 MORALITY says.

It’s also a reminder to “give me the roses while I live,” as 340 ODEM reminds us (ODEM also talks about “a pilgrim’s days,” so perhaps it’s passes the religious test).

Parting songs

There are a number of farewell songs that are not strictly religious in The Sacred Harp. Of course, there are religious parting songs as well. 254 WARSAW and 382 COSTON share the same secular lyric:

Dear friends, farewell! I do you tell,
Since you and I must part;
I go my way, and here you stay,
But still we’re joined in heart.
Your love to me has been most free,
Your conversation sweet;
How can I bear to journey where
With you I cannot meet?

But 69a MINISTER’S FAREWELL, which also has this verse, includes a second, religious one:

I trust you’ll pray both night and day,
And keep your garments white,
For you and me, that we may be
The children of the light.
If you die first, anon you must,
The will of God be done;
I hope the Lord will you reward
With an immortal crown.

So, as with our other categories, we can see these songs embedded in a Christian matrix. It’s natural to sing these songs, too, as essentially religious.

Miscellaneous other songs

The 1991 song 334 O COME AWAY (discussed in my essay, “‘O Come, Come Away’ is gone away”) is, strictly speaking, a temperance song. The temperance movement sprung from Christian roots, but there was a large secular component. 334 doesn’t match my religious test (to my surprise). 

The morality song found only in the 1991 edition, 413 THE LOVED ONES, enjoins the hearer to paternal respect, especially as we remember he must die as well:

Be kind to thy father, for when thou wert young,
Who loved thee so fondly as he?

On the face of it, 448b THE GRIEVED SOUL reads secular:

Come, my soul, and let us try
For a little season,
Ev’ry burden to lay by,
Come and let us reason.
What is this that casts thee down?
Who are those that grieve thee?
Speak and let the worst be known;
Speaking may relieve thee.

In fact, when I led this at the All-California Convention in 2006, someone came up to me and said, “You must be a therapist.” But this is an excerpt from Joseph Hart’s “Dialogue Between a Believer and His Soul,” which records an internal dialog of a person struggling with a sense of a cold, dark, and dead faith while seeking to be revived by Jesus.

212 SHARON is another somewhat ambiguous song. Again, it can be read as strictly secular:

How pleasant ’tis to see
Kindred and friends agree,
Each in his proper station move,
And each fulfill his part
With sympathizing heart,
In all the cares of life and love.

But it’s scriptural superscription places it in a Christian context: “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” from Psalm 133. I, at least, think of Psalm 133 when I sing it, but it’s more about the analogy of singing well together as a picture of living well together.

And that brings me to 254 ROSE OF SHARON, present in the 1991 edition, but removed in the 2025 edition. Again, on the face of it, this song doesn’t mention God or any religious practice. As I mentioned previously, it’s an anthem based on the biblical book The Song of Solomon 2:1-11 (also known as The Song of Songs). Most commentators I have read note that, with the exception of one disputed phrase, God is not mentioned at all in the entire book of The Song of Solomon. This is a secular book given canonical status by both Jews and Christians, and both Jews and Christians have analogized the Song spiritually in various ways. My judgment? I think Billings primarily meant his music to be more art music than religious music, and I think it therefore tips into the secular category. But of course, as with all these so-called secular songs, they are embedded in this Christian book, surrounded by other Christian songs and scriptures. 

The Christian nature of The Sacred Harp

I’ve noted time and again that the lyrics of The Sacred Harp are, for the most part, Christian. An essay on “Religious songs in The Sacred Harp would be very long indeed! Let’s try to put an estimate of what percentage of the book is religious in both the 1991 and 2025 edition; and ask the question, which some perhaps feared, whether The Sacred Harp is on a trajectory towards being a more secular book. Using my operational definition of a secular song, I count 24 secular songs in the 1991 edition, and 22 in the 2025 edition. This is essentially the same number, especially if you don’t want to count 254 ROSE OF SHARON as a secular song. The 2025 edition has more songs in total, though (554 in the 1991 edition, and 590 in the 2025 edition). Thus, the percentage of secular songs has actually gone down about one half a percent. In either case, the number of religious songs rounds to 96% — certainly indicating this is still an overwhelmingly Christian book. Worries about its secularization are overblown. Of course, the reasons that people write music in the shape note style, the reasons others sing it, and the contexts in which it is sung vary widely; I am talking about the contents of the book itself. 

These very large percentages should remind singers of this music who sing it for largely secular reasons to respect the tradition out of which the music springs. They should also remind singers of this music who sing it largely religious reasons to feel comfortable, on the one hand, that “our” book is still very much a Christian book, and, on the other hand, to remember that not everyone will be familiar with the idioms and ideas of the texts. Of course, one of the purposes of  the Vital Sparks newsletter is to explore the ideas and contexts these texts in depth.

As always, I look forward to your comments and corrections. 

Happy (American) Thanksgiving

I am grateful to you for reading this occasional series. Previously: https://vitalsparks.beehiiv.com/p/dire-hissings

The Apotheosis of Washington

The Sacred Harp is such a Christian book that it’s hard for me, sometimes, to remember that it contains a number of songs that are secular in nature. I was curious whether there were a significant change between the number of secular songs in the 1991 and 2025 editions. One might think that the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp, with its larger base of singers from many walks of life and locations, would be more secular than the 1991 edition.

This essay (in two parts) will explore the secular songs in these two editions of The Sacred Harp. My working definition of a secular song, in the context of this book, will be one that doesn’t explicitly mention God or especially Christian concepts and practices. Take, for example, the words to 137 LIBERTY:

No more beneath th’oppressive hand
Of tyranny we groan.
Behold the smiling, happy land
That freedom calls her own.

This is strictly a patriotic song: not inconsistent with Christian belief, but it does not require it. On the other hand, a song like 124 LOVER OF THE LORD is wholly non-secular in the sense I am using:

Lovers of pleasure more than God,
For you He suffered pain;
For you the Savior spilt His blood,
And shall He bleed in vain?
Oh, you must be a lover of the Lord,
Or you can’t go to heaven when you die.

Every line mentions God, Jesus, or Christian concepts like heaven or the atoning death of Jesus.

So, which are the secular songs in The Sacred Harp? They fall into several categories: patriotic songs, sentimental ballads, memento mori songs, and a few others with their own particular category—even, perhaps, a love song.

Patriotic songs

It is the patriotic songs I think of first when I consider secular songs. I have already mentioned 137 LIBERTY, but there are others. 242 ODE ON SCIENCE, in the 1991 edition, praises the American experiment:

The British yoke, the Gallic chain,
Was urged upon our necks in vain,
All haughty tyrants we disdain,
And shout, Long live America!

The Revision-Music Committee has not, to my knowledge, explained their rationale behind which songs were removed, but when Sacred Harp is regularly used in British and French singing conventions, it is easy to imagine why this song was removed! I do not know if it was intentional, but it is interesting that the new song at 242 in the 2025 edition is called REVERE, after the American patriot. Its words are religious—Watts’s “Am I a soldier of the cross” poem.

A song I strongly associate with this song is 358 MURILLO’S LESSON, partly because it, too, refers to the United States as Columbia, and centers the United States as a place of special import:

As down a lone valley with cedars o’erspread
From war’s dread confusion I pensively strayed,
The gloom from the face of fair heaven retired,
The winds hushed their murmurs, the thunders expired;
Perfumes as of Eden flowed sweetly along,
A voice as of angels enchantingly sung,
Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
The queen of the world and the child of the skies!

This song shed its rarely sung second verse in the 2025 edition. Again, I don’t have insight into why the second verse was dropped, but I do know the one time I led both verses I mildly surprised the class by singing them both. 

Another secular song is the Theodore Dwight’s lament over the death of George Washington, 110 MOUNT VERNON:

Where shall our nation turn its eye,
What help remains beneath the sky?
Our friend, protector, strength, and trust,
Lies low and mold’ring in the dust.

Washington is mentioned in another patriotic song, 346 THE AMERICAN STAR:

The spirits of Washington, Warren, Montgomery
Look down from the clouds with bright aspect serene.
Come, soldiers, a tear and a toast to their mem’ry,
Rejoicing they’ll see us as they once have been.
To us the high boon by the gods has been granted
To spread the glad tidings of liberty far.
Let millions invade us, we’ll meet them undaunted,
And conquer or die by th’American Star.

Like LIBERTY, ODE ON SCIENCE, and MURILLO’S LESSON, this song sees a special place for America; here “the gods” (surprising language for a Christian book) have granted America a boon to “spread the glad tidings of liberty far.” The Revolutionary generals seem demigods, looking down on America. It answers MOUNT VERNON’s question, “Where shall our nation turn its eye?” with the answer that the “spirit of Washington” et al. will guide America.

Sentimental ballads

Every month, I try to attend our local ballad session. It’s completely different from Sacred Harp singing: we sit around a table and sing solo, taking turns. We focus on songs from Ireland and the United Kingdom for the most part. Sometimes, I sing  The Lass of Aughrim, with its sad, sad lyrics. The unnamed lass tries to get Lord Gregory to acknowledge her and their child, but Gregory claims to not recognize her. It ends with her plaintive plea:

The rain falls on my yellow locks
And the dew, it wets my skin.
My babe lies cold within my arms
Lord Gregory, let me in.

Similar songs, with similar sentiments, show up in The Sacred Harp. The perfidy of men is hinted at in 359 BRIDE’S FAREWELL.

Farewell, Mother, now I leave you,
Griefs and hopes my bosom swell,
One to trust who may deceive me:
Farewell, Mother, fare you well.

BRIDE’S FAREWELL is secular, but not all sentimental ballads in The Sacred Harp are. In the 2025 edition, 438 THE BLIND GIRL makes an appearance. It, too, is a daughter pleading with her mother. Here is its last verse:

O mother, will the God above
Show tenderness like thee?
Will He bestow such care and love
On a poor girl like me?
Dear mother, leave me not alone,
Go with me when I die;
Lead thy blind daughter to the throne
And stay in yonder sky.

But 398 THE DYING BOY is also secular; this time, a son calls to his mother:

I’m dying, Mother, dying now,
Please raise my aching head,
And fan my heated, burning brow;
Your boy will soon be dead.

These sentimental ballads seek to inspire empathy and compassion in the singer or listener. When we sing them, we enter another person’s world, or perhaps express our own fears and distress at the way things are.

Looking to part 2

In part two of this essay, I will discuss secular memento mori songs (songs that remind us that we will all die one day), as well as some songs that don’t fit neatly into these categories. I’ll also try to answer the question, Is the 2025 edition more secular than the 1991 edition? (Spoiler alert: No. But why do I think that?) 

But before I go, I want to discuss an important fact about these secular songs, and also to ask a question to consider.

Here is the important fact: these secular songs are set among hundreds of Christian religious songs, and each song in The Sacred Harp gets its own Bible verse. Even 346 THE AMERICAN STAR has one (I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about.—Psalm 3:6). In one way, these secular songs are hiding out in the midst of a mass of Christian songs. In another way, these secular songs are Christianized by their presence in a Christian song book and the wraparound Bible verse. And some of these have been “secularized” by virtue of not having all of their verses present. For example, the poetry from 398 THE DYING BOY is extracted from a longer poem, which also includes these Christian words:

A band of angels beckon me,
I can no longer stay;
Hark! how they sing, "We welcome thee;"
Oh! dear one, haste away. 

The hour has come, the end is near,
My soul is mounting high;
What glorious strains salute my ear,
From heav'n's bright angel choir!

The poem concludes with the boy’s hope of a crown in heaven as he passes through “the pearly gate.” 398 THE DYING BOY is secular only because we don’t have all of the words.

And here is a question to ponder: What to think about 254 ROSE OF SHARON in the 1991 edition?

I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley.
As the lily among the thorns, so is my love among the daughters;
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.

I sat down under his shadow with great delight,
And his fruit was sweet to my taste.

He brought me to the banqueting house;
His banner over me was love.

Stay me with flagons,
Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love.

I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
By the roes, and by the hinds of the field,
That you stir not up, nor awake, my love, till he please.

The voice of my beloved,
Behold! he cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.

My beloved spake,
And said unto me,
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.

Billings’s anthem, based on Song of Solomon 2:1-11 (with several verses left out), is, on the one hand, clearly Biblical, and so, religious. But it is just a love song, even if metaphorically (and, to my mind, beautifully) it is taken to describe Christ, the “beloved” of the song, and the people of God as the “rose of Sharon.” As Ephesians 5:32 says, “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

So, which is it, a secular song, or a religious one?

As always, let me know where I am wrong!

Paddle-to-the-sea

If there’s anything I learned studying linguistics, it’s this: language changes over time, and it’s very hard to do anything about it.  “Nice” used to mean “foolish,” and now it means “pleasant.” A “knave” used to mean a boy or servant, and later came to mean a “cad,” and now isn’t used much at all. Linguists call this “semantic drift” or “semantic change”. Most of the lyrics in The Sacred Harp come from the 18th and 19th centuries, and it would be very surprising if the language of these lyrics were exactly the same as the language we use today, even when we use formal registers such as religious poetry.

Thanks to Rowan Simms for suggesting this topic, which I think will be fun to look at. Rowan suggested looking at pitiful, found in 571 HAMRICK:

Lord, I would be as Thou art;
Give me Thine obedient heart.
Thou art pitiful and kind;
Let me have Thy loving mind.

In modern English, noted Rowan, pitiful typically means “worthy of pity,” but in Wesley’s text, talking about God, it means “full of pity.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Wesley’s use is very much in line with its first attestation, “For thou..art pityful [Latin miserator] and merciable” from a psalter from around 1350. But the sense of “worthy of pity” is quite old as well, going back to the late 1400’s. So, in this case, one of the meanings of “pitiful” has gone out of the language.

A similar plight occurs with another adjective: awful, which originally only meant something like “awe-inspiring” or even “fear-inspiring,” as is evident in its use in The Sacred Harp:

His head with awful glories crowned (120 CHAMBERS)
Thou awful judge of quick and dead (131 MESSIAH)
Sweet majesty and awful love (362 NORWICH; 536 SWEET MAJESTY)

By the late 1700s, this word begins to have the meaning of “very unfortunate or undesirable” as well. I think we can see a bit of this turn in two texts, which, I think, still contain some of the “awe-inspiring” sense:

From heav’n the awful mandate flies, The father of his country dies. (131 MOUNT VERNON)
But oh, the sad and awful state Of those who stand and come too late (60 DAY OF WORSHIP)

But the modern meaning of “very bad in quality” (not found until the early 1900s) can create a humorous association at times; for example, in: 

Hark! the trumpet’s awful sound (295 IOWA)

This raises a question: What to do with these incongruous, and potentially humorous instances of semantic drift? Personally, I allow myself an internal chuckle, but otherwise, I look to the authorial intent.

Perhaps the semantic drift some people most humorous is the change in meaning of “bowels,” particularly in 68 PISGAH.

Jesus, Thou art the sinner’s friend,
As such I look to Thee;
Now in the bowels of Thy love,
O Lord, remember me.

I recall someone standing up to lead PISGAH and poking fun at the song. But the song is a plea to be remembered viscerally, which, etymologically, is just another way of saying “in the viscera, the guts, the bowels.” We have all known the gut punch of getting very bad news, or the butterflies of young love. Our gut is an emotional location.

The text of 430 ARBACOOCHEE actually reflects a change from Isaac Watts’s original words. We have the following, attested quite early (in 1785, according to Hymnary.org, about 45 years after Watts’s original poem):

Behold the love, the gen’rous love,
That holy David shows;
Behold his kind compassion move
For his afflicted foes!

But Watts originally wrote:

Behold the Love, the generous love,
That holy David shows;
Hark, how his sounding bowels move
To his afflicted foes!

Let’s finish up this first installment of semantic drift with the word conversation. In 69t MINISTER’S FAREWELL,  254 WARSAW, and 382 COSTON, conversation seems to have something like its current meaning:

Your love to me has been most free,
Your conversation sweet.

Similarly, in 55 CONVERSE:

I’m tired of visits, modes and forms,
And flatt’ries paid to fellow worms;
Their conversation cloys.

But something else is going on in  205 PLEASANT HILL:

Let deep repentance, faith, and love,
Be joined with godly fear;
And all my conversation prove
My heart to be sincere.

The OED lists an obsolete meaning of conversation: “The action of living or having one's being in a place or among persons. Also figurative of one's spiritual being.” They state this meaning was lost by the beginning of the 1700s or so. This sense is quite common in the King James Version of the Bible, from 1611. For example, in the letter To the Ephesians: “Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh” (2:3) and “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts” (4:22). Modern translations tend to use something like “way of life” for the Greek word anastrophē.

Semantic drift can lead to misunderstanding, and on occasion, to humor. But taking these texts and authors seriously means trying to understand their original intentions.

Send me your favorite example of semantic drift from The Sacred Harp, and maybe I can use it in a future column!

Thanks to a vibrant discussion on Fasola Discussions group and inter-library loan, I found out a lot of new information about the poetry behind 344 O COME AWAY in the 1991 edition (but which was removed in the 2025 edition). If you found the original essay interesting, you might like to see the updated version: “O Come, Come Away” is gone away.

Tents of Kedar. Image probably from the 1836 Topical Encyclopedia of the BIble

I attended the inaugural singing from the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp on September 13 and 14, 2025. On Saturday, living composers with songs that are new to the book had the opportunity to lead the songs they had composed.

To my surprise, the song that made me weep was Thomas Ward’s KEDAR on page 357. There is even video evidence, since I was in the camera’s view (I’m the gray-haired man in the blue shirt in the bottom right corner, sitting by the pole). Ward uses several verses of Isaac Watts’s paraphrase of Psalm 120, which Watts superscribes as a “Complaint of quarrelsome neighbors, or a devout wish of peace.” Here is the complete text of Watts’s poem; the bolded verses are the ones in the book.

Thou God of love, Thou ever blest,
Pity my suffering state;
When wilt Thou set my soul at rest
From lips that love deceit?

Hard lot of mine, my days are cast
Among the sons of strife,
Whose never-ceasing brawlings waste
My golden hours of life.

O might I fly to change my place,
How would I choose to dwell
In some wide lonesome wilderness,
And leave these gates of hell.

Peace is the blessing that I seek,
How lovely are its charms;
I am for peace, but when I speak,
They all declare for arms.

New passions still their souls engage
And keep their malice strong;
What shall be done to curb thy rage,
O thou devouring tongue!

Should burning arrows smite them through,
Strict justice would approve;
But I had rather spare my foe,
And melt his heart with love.

This seems like a hymn for the era of social media, which is purpose-built to enrage and enflame the enmity between us and our neighbors! It does seem like a hard lot to be caught wasting our “golden hours of life” in “never-ceasing brawlings,” especially because we willingly cast ourselves into those brawlings. We might prefer a “lonesome wilderness[1]” to the continually renewed and passionate malice we find ourselves in.

Watts’s bitter response is to “smite them through” with “burning arrows.” This is what they deserve.

But he is called to a better way, which is the way of forgiveness and love. Only this has the hope of melting the hearts of his enemies. This is his Christian response. Surely, Watts is also thinking of Christ’s call to forgiveness and love, and Christ’s life of forgiveness and love, which led to Christ’s death, but also showed a new way of living. It is better to live the blessed, flourishing life as a person of charming peace than “declare for arms.”

Why is this song called “Kedar”? The answer is in the original psalm. Here is the text of Psalm 120 in the King James Version:

1 In my distress I cried unto the Lord,
 and he heard me.
2 Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips,
 and from a deceitful tongue.
3 What shall be given unto thee?
 or what shall be done unto thee,
 thou false tongue?
4 Sharp arrows of the mighty,
 with coals of juniper.
5 Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech,
 that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!
6 My soul hath long dwelt
 with him that hateth peace.
7 I am for peace:
 but when I speak, they are for war.

Psalm 120 is the first of the so-called psalms of ascent, which were most likely collected and used as hymns as worshippers ascended into the temple in Jerusalem. Verse 5 mentions Mesech and Kedar. The IVP Bible Background Commentary says, “since these places are in opposite directions from Israel, they are probably paired as representatives of remote and barbaric places.” Thomas Ward pointed out to me that “Kedar” is used to mean a refuge in John Bayer’s HYMN OF THE DUNKERS (367 in The Shenandoah Harmony), which uses a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier: “Praise be His name who deigns to bless/Our Kedar of the wilderness!”

According to the principles that Watts used for his psalm paraphrases, it’s not surprising that Watts left out the names of Mesech and Kedar; they would be unfamiliar to his audience. But Samuel Crossman, writing in 1664, feels free to use Kedar in a verse that points towards Psalm 120:

Ah me! ah me! that I
In Kedar’s tents here stay;
No place like this on high;
Thither, Lord! guide my way.

Oh happy place! When shall I be,
My God! with thee, To see thy face?

So, although it’s not directly referenced in Watts’s paraphrase, the idea of being in a small, safe tent, even in the midst of all the troubles of the world is hinted at in Ward’s choice of a title, the way Crossman and Whittier use the image, and, of course, in the psalm itself. Inadequate, but better than nothing.

According to Joseph Belcher[2], the Reverend John Adams, after being dismissed from his position after 30 years in Durham, New Hampshire, requested his people to sing the first three verses of Watts’s poem to the “praise and glory of God, and to their own edification,”. This is quite a burning arrow, which, perhaps, “strict justice would approve.” But it’s just the opposite of Watts’s intent. Also, according to his principles of paraphrase, he keeps the lament of the psalm, but also shows a new response of love.

I hope I will remember this, the next time I want to send a burning arrow to smite some fools, and I hope they will remember it the next time they want to send a burning arrow my foolish way.

[1] Incidentally, I think this is the first time “lonesome wilderness” appears in print.

[2] Historical Sketches of Hymns, their Writers, and their Influence, 1859.

Temperance Hall, Kirkby Stephen

Vital Sparks: “O Come, Come Away” is gone away

One of the hallmarks of The Sacred Harp is that it does not shy away from many unpleasantries in life. Death, of course, is a major theme, and so is sin, temptation, and failure. Since 1850, The Sacred Harp has acknowledged the reality that alcohol is often a ravaging influence on individuals and their families. It has included the temperance song, 334 O COME AWAY:

O come, come away,
From labor now reposing,
Our jubilee has set us free—
O come, come away!
Come, hail the day that celebrates
The ransom of th’inebriates
From all that does intoxicate,
O come, come away!

We welcome you here!
With heart and hand wide open,
Ye gallant sons of temperance—
We welcome you here!
Heav’n’s blessings on your plans, we pray!
Ye come our sinking friends to save,
And rescue from a drunkard’s grave;
We welcome you here! 

We welcome you here!
Ye who with taste perverted
Have seized the cup, and drank it up—
We welcome you here!
Come, join us in our holy aim,
The poor besotted to reclaim,
The broken heart to cheer again;
O come, sign the pledge!

This language is old fashioned: we don’t call people “inebriates” or “drunkards” or “besotted” any more or consider any taste “perverted” except for some sexual tastes. These are funny words to our modern, sophisticated ears, as is, perhaps, the whole temperance movement of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The first printings of this poem in The Sacred Harp included two more verses [1]:

We welcome you here!
Ye who your vows have broken,
Falling before the tempter's power,—
We welcome you here!
Ye who have sold yourselves for naught,
Take back the priceless boon you bought,
O take a sober, second thought,
And try, try again!

We welcome you here!
Ye maids and matrons lovely,
Whose charms, we yield, must win the field,—
We welcome you here!
Ye who have hearts to feel for wo,
Wide as the streams of sorrow flow.
O frown on the deadly foe,
But smile on the sons!

These additional words were fit “in the corner” of the song, but they highlight that alcohol was seen primarily as a male problem, but which affected both them as well as the “maids and matrons lovely” and their woeful hearts.

And so, this song has been mostly sung in jest, especially for those who have the secret knowledge that the tune to which we sing these words come from a German drinking song, Krambambuli. Those of us who are either alcoholics or have friends or family members who are alcoholics sometimes wince at the jesting as much as at the antiquated language. So, I guess I am glad that the song is being left out of the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp.

This column doesn’t describe tunes much; we mostly focus on texts. But I find it interesting that Krambambuli was probably not the direct source of this temperance song. That is, I don’t think it was a conscious decision to convert this song from a drinking song to an anti-drinking song. The 1850 edition of The Sacred Harp got this tune, according to Makers of The Sacred Harp from The Hesperian Harp of 1848. But the thing is, The Hesperian Harp uses different words:

O come, come away!
The Sabbath morn is passing;
Let’s hasten to the Sabbath school;
O come, come away!
The Sabbath bells are rising clear,
The joyous peals salute my ear,
I love their voice to hear;
O come, come away!

This is a Sabbath song, not an anti-drinking song. So, where did the text come from? We will see there are many versions, and the story is interesting, I think.

The original text has nothing to do with temperance, or Sabbath school. It was published in 1842 (so, just eight years before its publication in The Sacred Harp). The author was William E. Hickson, a British writer who wrote mainly educational works, including instruction in singing. He was most famous for his book The Singing Master, but in his book Part Singing he published a song “Come, come away.” The book received a very favorable review in The Westminster Review. This is not surprising, because Hickson owned The Westminster Review. In the Review, the sheet music for “Come, come away is printed,” and the tune is described as “a German air.” In fact, the reviewer specifically cites Krambambuli:

In “Come, come away,” some of our readers will recognize the celebrated air of 'Crambambuli,' sung by all German students; the new words, however, relate not, as in the original, to an intoxicating liquor, but to a social reunion.

Part Singing was written to encourage people of all types of people to sing in informal social situations on the model of what was happening in Germany:

All the world has heard of the Bürschen choral songs of the German universities, but what most interests us in that land of music are the musical family reunions which the tourist sometimes meets with, where father and son, brother and sister, friend and neighbour, pass a long winter's evening cheerfully together, with no other resource, and wanting no better, than conversation and singing in parts.

And the original words are such a call to the “social joys” of gathering in good cheer and singing:

Oh, come, come away,
From labor now reposing,
Let busy care a while forbear,
Oh, come, come away.
Come, come our social joys renew,
And there, where Trust and Friendship grew,
Let true hearts welcome you,
Oh, come, come away.

From toil, and the cares
On which the day is closing,
The hour of eve brings sweet reprieve,
Oh, come, come away:
Oh, come where love will smile on thee,
And round its hearth will gladness be,
And time fly merrily;
Oh, come, come away.

While sweet Philomel
The weary traveller cheering
With evening songs her note prolongs,
Oh, come, come away.
In answering songs of sympathy
We'll sing in tuneful harmony
Of Hope, Joy, Liberty.
Oh, come, come away.

The bright day is gone,
The moon and stars appearing,
With silver light illume the night,
Oh, come, come away.
Come, join your prayers with ours, address
Kind heaven our peaceful home to bless
With Health, Hope, Happiness,
Oh, come,  come, away.

This poem shares with the 1850 Sacred Harp poem its rhythmic structure, the repeated “come, come away” structure, and its first two lines. At a kind of deep level, it’s a call to join a social band, with the Sacred Harp calling alcoholics to a band of temperance. Hickson’s poem is very general, though. Of course, they also share the catchy Krambambuli tune.

This tune and this poem proved popular, and the text was adapted into all kinds of service. Hickson’s poem was often published unchanged, as well. I think the tune quickly lost its association with its use as a German drinking song (until, as Armin Hadamer points out, English translations of the original German versions came about in the 1870s [2]. Makers of The Sacred Harp attributes the anti-drinking text to Stowe’s Melodies for the Temperance Band of 1856. But this cannot be the case, since the version in The Sacred Harp appears earlier, in 1850. But the text in Melodies is interesting [3], In the text below, I have bolded text that the Melodies text shares with The Sacred Harp, and italicized text that it shares with Part Singing.

Oh, come, come away,
From labor now reposing,
Let busy care awhile forbear,
Oh, come, come away.
Come, come our social joys renew,
And here, where trust and friendship grow,
Let true hearts welcome you,
Oh, come, come away.

From toil and cares
On which the day is closing,
The hour of eve brings sweet repose,
Oh, come come away.
Oh, come where love will smile on thee,
And round the hearth will gladness be,
And time fly merrily,
Oh, come, come away.

The bright day is gone,
The moon and stars appearing,
With silver light, illume the night,
Oh, come, come away.
We’ll join the grateful songs of praise,
To him who crowns our peaceful days,
And health, and hope, and peace convey,
Oh, come, come away.

Come sign the pledge,
The sight is truly cheering,
We’ll raise our song, its notes prolong,
Oh come sign the pledge.
We sing the praise of Temperance,
We’re pledged to Total Abstinence
From all that can intoxicate,
Oh come sign the pledge.

The first two lines are shared in all three texts (and, these lines are often retained in other versions, too). But it is interesting that the last two lines are shared between The Sacred Harp and Melodies. There must be an earlier version; Robert Vaughn has discovered an 1847 text which is identical to the Melodies text, and this is a possible source for The Sacred Harp’s last two lines [4]. It’s possible that the differences in The Sacred Harp are original to it, but it seems also likely there is another source out there we haven’t come across. As an exercise, try writing a version of “O come, come away” on almost any topic; I think you’ll find it an easy enough task.

Certainly, as noted, the structure of Hickson’s text and the tune was put to lots of uses: For example, it was used for James G. Blaine’s run for president in 1884:

Away to the polls
Ye sons of free Columbia,
Com join the song that rolls along,
‘Tis Blaine—he’s the man!
He’s earnest and he’s able, too,
He’s able, honest, tried and true,
His color’s the “red, white, and blue,”
Yes, Blaine—he’s the man!

Around 1847, the Adventists used it to sing of the second coming of Jesus [5]:

O, come, come away!
For time's career is closing;
Let worldly care henceforth forbear;
O, come, come away!
Come, come! our holy joys renew,
Where love and heavenly friendship grew;
The Spirit welcomes you!
O, come, come away.

The Latter-day Saints, around 1841, had a song with a similar, but not identical structure and tune [6]:

The time is far spent--there is little remaining
To publish glad tidings by sea and by land;
Then hasten, ye heralds! go forward proclaiming–
Repent for the kingdom of heaven's at hand.

And in 1852, Joshua Simpson, a free-born Black man, used this tune for an anti-slavery song. It’s really quite an interesting one: it’s presented as a dialog between Queen Victoria and American enslaved Blacks, who encourages them to relocate to Canada, where they will receive the protection of the British government and a free life [7] [8].

O Come! Come away,
My sable sons & daughters,
Why linger there
In the dark despair?
O come! O come away!
On Eria’s northern banks I stand,
With open arms, and stretched out hands;
From tyrant Columbia’s land
O come! Come away!

Like the tune to 162 PLENARY, this is a tune that has been put to lots of service: political campaigns, temperance campaigns, anti-slavery campaigns, religious and social campaigns. In the 19th century, you could use this tune to express serious and heart-felt sentiments. In the 21st, this is not quite as true: we are a bit too familiar with it as a drinking song, perhaps.

Footnotes and References

[1] 1860 Sacred Harp

[2] Hadamer, Armin. O Come, Come Away: Temperance, shape notes, and patriotism. Lied und populäre Kultur / Song and Popular Culture, 2000, 45. Jahrg. (2000),

pp. 109-120.

[3] Stowe, Phineas. Melodies for the Temperance Band: A Collection of Hymns and Songs, Designed for Temperance Meetings, Social Gatherings, &c., Nathaniel Noyes, Temperance Depository. 1856

[4] Vaughn, Robert. Songs Before Unknown: a Companion to The Sacred Harp, Revised Cooper Edition, 2012, 2015. Hollow Square Books.

[5] Addition to the Supplement to the Millennial Harp, Boston, circa 1846. Karen Willard brought this to my attention.

[6] Smith, Emma, A collection of sacred hymns, for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Nauvoo, Illinois, 1841. https://archive.org/details/collectionofsacr01smit/page/138 Wade Kotter brought this to my attention.

[7] “Queen Victoria conversing with her slave children”. The complete text can be found at https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/read/original-anti-slavery-songs/section/52937b97-ca6d-417e-8d21-15f96e6a2e5e
[8] More information about Johua Simpson can be found in the article, “The musical expression of anti-slavery sentiment in Ohio,” by Carol Bishop Myers in The Sonneck Society for American Music Bulletin, Vol. XVIII, No 1, Spring 1992.

Melancholia I, by Albrecht Dürer, courtesy of Wikipedia

William Cowper (pronounced “Cooper”) has four poems in the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp: 27t BETHEL, 168 COWPER (first verse), 287 CAMBRIDGE, and 397 THE FOUNTAIN.

The text to CAMBRIDGE is among the bleakest in the book:

The Lord will happiness divine
On contrite hearts bestow;
Then tell me, gracious God, is mine
A contrite heart, or no?

I hear, but seem to hear in vain,
Insensible as steel;
If aught is felt, ’tis only pain
To find I cannot feel.

I sometimes think myself inclined
To love Thee, if I could;
But often feel another mind
Averse to all that’s good.

My best desires are faint and few,
I fain would strive for more;
But, when I cry, “My strength renew,”
Seem weaker than before.

Thy saints are comforted, I know,
And love Thy house of prayer;
I sometimes go where others go,
But find no comfort there.

When I lead or sing this song, I often wonder how many verses I should lead. On the one hand, it is a slow song and singing many verses takes a long time; also, each verse has the same theme, a lament for the poet’s inability to know whether they are truly “contrite.” On the other hand, each verse expresses a different aspect of that unknowing. The first verse raises the question. The second verse notes a sorrow about his sorrow: he feels sad, but he feels sad that that sadness doesn’t really seem to change him. The third verse notes the conflicting desires he has: he both wants and does not want to be good. The fourth verse laments that his prayers to be better seem to only result in his being worse. The fifth verse laments his inability to be comforted by what comforts others. Usually, I choose the first verse and one other, depending on what is on my mind at the time—but beware if you call on me to lead in a small singing! We might sing all five.

Cowper was an exceedingly famous poet of his day (the late 1700s). He was one of the main contributors to John Newton’s Olney Hymns, one of the most influential hymnbooks of his time. He also tried to kill himself three times, suffered from “melancholia” all his life (what we would probably call clinical depression), and was committed to an asylum. He wrote, “I, fed with judgement, in a fleshly tomb, am/Buried above ground.” (Knowing about his suicide attempts, I often mentally sing CAMBRIDGE in honor of friends who have died by suicide).

27t BETHEL also contains some despairing lines:

Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and His word?

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
How sweet their mem’ry still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill.

It would be enough, I think, to end this essay here, without having to answer Cowper’s despair. It would be enough to acknowledge that, at times and at different levels, almost all of us feel the despair and depression that Cowper felt, some of us clinically so.

But Cowper does engage with his melancholia in different ways: through prayer, through hope, through theological reflection, and through gratitude.

Our text for CAMBRIDGE, already unusually long for a song in The Sacred Harp, is missing a final verse, which is a prayer:

Oh, make this heart rejoice or ache;
Decide this doubt for me;
And if it be not broken, break,
And heal it, if it be.

Cowper wants either the sure knowledge that he is truly contrite (and therefore able to “rejoice” that “happiness divine” will be his, or that he is not. If not, he prays that God will make him truly contrite, to break his heart, but then, to heal it as well. In BETHEL’s text, he prays:

Return, O holy Dove, return,
Sweet messenger of rest!

And also, he prays:

The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from Thy throne,
And worship only Thee.

He implores for help from the Holy Spirit to overcome any obstacles to worship, anything that takes undue attention away from God.

If God will do this for him, he feels a certain hope that he will return to the blessedness he once felt:

So shall my walk be close with God,
Calm and serene my frame;
So purer light shall mark the road
That leads me to the Lamb.

Cowper reflects theologically on the “vile” state he finds himself in. He trusts in the saving power of Christ’s death to overcome even his own sinfulness. As he writes in the text we use for THE FOUNTAIN:

There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.

Our familiarity with this text might lessen the impact of this image: Jesus Christ’s blood acting as a cleansing agent to clean the stains of our sinfulness. Even the thief who was crucified with Jesus rejoiced to see the fountain of salvation as they died together. Cowper in solidarity with the thief in his sinfulness, can wash his own sins away. Of course, we have seen Cowper return to a fearful state, and I think it is useful to recall another text of his. One of his most famous poems is quoted in the 1991 edition, which uses the first verse of the poem as the first verse of 478 MY RISING SUN. It, too, was published in Olney Hymns:

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sov'reign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take:
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain:
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.

Wikipedia states that the poem, given the descriptive title, “Light shining out of darkness,” was “written in 1773, just before the onset of a depressive illness, during which Cowper attempted suicide by drowning.” It is given a Bible verse, John 13:7, which states, “Jesus answered and said unto [Peter], What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.”

Those of us who have felt the “bitter taste” of depression—Christian or not—find it hard to imagine a sweeter future. Cowper tastes the same bitterness, and, as a Christian, wonders why God is presenting a “frowning countenance” to him. His theological reflection is that our own sense is “feeble,” and likely to “scan [God’s] work in vain,” just because our senses are dimmed by the difficulties we face. He has a theology of hope here as well: he believes God’s “purposes will ripen fast” and that God will make what he is doing plain to us. It’s a vast and complicated world of cloudy storms and seas and “unfathomable mines,” but God, vaster and greater than the world, and working through it, will bring forth an overabundance of blessings that will “break with blessings on your head.”

It’s worth noting that these verses have sometimes been used to harm people in depression or other difficult situations; it’s good to remember that Cowper wrote as one of his worst periods of melancholia was beginning.

Finally, Cowper also expresses an attitude of thankfulness for the life he has, even with its difficulties. This is related to the hope he believes in for the final restoration of his own life, through the death of Christ, and in the power of the inscrutable God. We see his gratitude a bit in:

Forgive the song that falls so low
Beneath the gratitude I owe;
It means Thy praise, however poor,
An angel’s song can do no more.

Of course, his sense of inadequacy shows here too.  But his gratitude is emphasized in the text from THE FOUNTAIN, where he rejoices to see his sins washed away, and:

Redeeming love has been my theme
And shall be till I die.

 William Cowper and Robert Robinson (Author of “Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,” used in 135 OLNEY and 333 FAMILY CIRCLE) are among my favorite lyricists just because, like me, they experienced depression and “melancholia.” Singing these lyrics help me to express, in solidarity with them and other fellow depressives, the “bitter taste.” But they also lead me, through prayer, hope, theological reflection, and gratitude to engage with that depression in a “calm and serene” way.

In my studies of Isaac Watts, I came across the poet Elizabeth Rowe, née Singer. The story that Watts proposed to her, but was turned down. She did marry Thomas Rowe when she was 36 and he was 23; but Thomas dies of “consumption” just five years into the marriage. In any case, Watts and Rowe were great admirers of each other’s poetry and Christian piety. In her will, she asked Watts to publish a book of meditations by her (“Devout Exercises of the Heart in Meditation and Soliloquy, Prayer, and Praise”).

Elizabeth (Singer) Rowe.
From an edition of her collected works, published in 1808 by W. Suttaby.

She was one of those poets who were very popular in their day, but who is not read much currently, as tastes change. Exhibiting modesty and virtue and writing rhymed, largely religious, poetry under a classical pseudonym (in her case, “Philomela”) is certainly not the modern style. She wrote “Pindaric odes” and a 2000-line History of Joseph — again, not à la mode. She wrote many hymns in standard meter, and I think she was skillful in this genre, although I have not made a great study of them. One of her hymns, Before the rosy dawn of day appeared in many hymnbooks and tune books.

1. Before the rosy dawn of day,
To thee, my God, I’ll sing;
Awake, my soft and tuneful lyre!
Awake, each charming string! 

2. Awake! and let thy flowing strain
Glide through the midnight air,
While high amidst her silent orb
The silver moon rolls clear. 

3. While all the glitt’ring starry lamps
Are lighted in the sky,
And set their Maker’s greatness forth
To thy admiring eye: 

4. While watchful angels round the just,
As nightly guardians wait,
In lofty strains of grateful praise
Thy spirit elevate. 

5. Awake, my soft and tuneful lyre!
Awake each charming string!
Before the rosy dawn of day,
To thee, my God, I’ll sing. 

6. Those round the heav’nly arch dost draw
A dark and sable veil,
And all the beauties of the world
From mortal eyes conceal. 

7. Again, the sky with golden beams
Thy skilful hands adorn,
And paint, with cheerful splendor gay,
The fair ascending morn. 

8. And as the gloomy night returns,
Or smiling day renews,
Thy constant goodness still my soul
With benefits pursues. 

9. For this I’ll midnight vows to thee
With early incense bring;
And e’er the rosy dawn of day,
Thy lofty praises sing.

Not all of these verses are successful, perhaps, but some are quite charming. I like the repeat of “Before the rosy dawn of day” as the poem progresses, and the images of the stars being lighted under God’s watchful eye while angels are guarding us in our sleep.

The first two verses are the poetry for ENFIELD 184, with music by Samuel Chandler, first published (says Makers of The Sacred Harp) in the 1785 edition of Brownson’s Select Harmony. Unfortunately, I think, it is not sung often enough. Based on a search at Internet Archive, this poem was set to music in The Delaware Harmony by Azariah Fobes, and appears with ENFIELD in Smith and Little’s Easy Instructor, Stephen Jenks’s Harmony of Zion (1818), The 1819 Village Harmony, Lewis’s The Beauties of Harmony, The Missouri Harmony (1821), Wyeth’s Repository (1826), Die Union Choral Harmonie (with German translation) in 1833, and  The Ancient Lyre (1848). It has appeared in every version of The Sacred Harp (in the Denson revision line) since the first edition in 1844.

I can’t find a good transcription of all her hymns, but I would recommend to rising composers that they look online at Internet Archive for her complete works.

How the wondrous doctrine of the blessed Trinity shines, through the whole of our religion, and sheds a glory upon every part of it!
— Isaac Watts, “The gift of the Spirit,” Remnants of Time.

(Note: I am writing this in early June, 2025. Trinity Sunday will be celebrated on June 15, and this is my annual sermon or essay on the Trinity. Also, I will be teaching a class at Camp Fasola on Watts. Camp will be held June 30 – July 4. I hope you can join me! As always, I look forward to comments and corrections.)

Hymn 29 from Watts’s Hymns and Spiritual Songs

Most people, including Sacred Harp singers, if they are aware of Isaac Watts at all, know him only through his hymns. They are unaware of his many other writings. That is not too surprising; this is true of most eighteen century writers! But I have had a couple of conversations with people who have heard rumors that perhaps Watts had some non-orthodox understandings of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity; that he was, at the end of his life, a Unitarian.

Scott Aniol has written a quite convincing article [1] showing that Watts was no Unitarian, and, in fact, was orthodox in his understanding of the Trinity. Fortunately, there is a lot of evidence of Watts’s beliefs and their development over time. He wrote four books on the Trinity and the person of Jesus Christ and many essays and sermons. In particular, Aniol quotes Watts as saying, he “freely and delightfully confesses” agreement with the Athanasian Creed, which is understood by many as the orthodox Christian understanding of the Trinity, especially in the West.

What got Watts into a bit of trouble was that he was unwilling to subscribe to a view that would declare as heresy anyone who would not subscribe to this [2]. His unwillingness to require such belief is in line with his Nonconformist ideals that Scripture alone is the standard of belief. In the same essay, Aniol notes that Watts writes, “I take no human writings for a test of the divinity or truth of my opinions.” Watts was also more than skeptical of the Roman Catholic Church, and thus of its creeds and theology, and wanted to avoid the “scholastic language” typically used. For Watts, Scripture, logic, and the illumination of the Holy Spirit were enough. But just because he was unwilling to use the time-tested language of, say, the Athanasian Creed, his own language opened him up to criticism of his orthodoxy.

I wrote this essay so that the rumor of Watts’s Unitarianism would be put to rest. But I also wanted to speak up for Watts as a model of theological practice. He was willing to put his deepest beliefs to the test, but he was also willing to allow some latitude when he disagreed with others, even about the Trinity [3]. He also deeply wanted to understand the God he loved, and I want to finish by reprinting what is known as his “Solemn Address,” written near this end of his life, and which was published posthumously. In it, he pleads with God to help him understand God’s nature, while, at the same time, recognizing the limits of his own ability to understand that nature. Watts wants to think deeply and reverently about God, and fears that his thoughts might dishonor God.

The Author's solemn Address to the great and ever-blessed God, on a Review of what he had written in the Trinitarian Controversy, prefixed by him to some Pieces on that Subject, which it was not judged necessary to publish.

Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I plead with thee; yet I may talk with thee concerning thy judgments. Permit me, O my God and Father, to plead with thee concerning the revelations of thy nature and thy grace, which are made in thy gospel: And let me do it with all that humble reverence, and that holy awe of thy Majesty, which becomes a creature in the presence of his God.

Hast thou not, O Lord God Almighty, hast thou not transacted thy divine and important affairs among men by thy Son Jesus Christ, and by thy holy Spirit? and hast thou not ordained that men should transact their highest and most momentous concerns with thee, by thy Son and by thy Spirit? Hast thou not, by the mouth of thy Son Jesus, required all that profess his religion to be washed with water in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost? Is it not my duty then, to enquire, who or what are these sacred names, and what they signify? Must I not know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ thy Son, whom thou hast sent, that I may fulfil all my respective duties towards thyself and thy Son, in hope of eternal life? Hath not thy Son himself appealed to thee in his last prayer, that eternal life depends upon this knowledge? And since thou hast made so much use of thy holy Spirit in our religion, must I not have some knowledge of this thy Spirit also, that I may pay thee all those honours thou requirest from this divine revelation?

Hast thou not ascribed divine names, and titles, and characters to thy Son and thy holy Spirit in thy word, as well as ascribed them to thyself? And hast thou not appointed to them such glorious offices as cannot be executed without something of divinity or true godhead in them? And yet art not thou, and thou alone, the true God? How shall a poor weak creature be able to adjust and reconcile these clashing ideas, and to understand this mystery? Or must I believe and act blindfold, without understanding?

Holy Father, thou knowest, how firmly I believe, with all my soul, whatsoever thou hast plainly written and revealed in thy word. I believe thee to be the only true God, the supreme of beings, self-sufficient for thine own existence, and for all thy infinite affairs and transactions among creatures. I believe thy Son Jesus Christ to be all-sufficient for the glorious work of mediation between God and man, to which thou hast appointed him. I believe he is a man, in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. I believe he is one with God; he is God manifested in the flesh; and that the man Jesus is so closely and inseparably united with the true and eternal Godhead, as to become one person, even as the human soul and body make one man. I believe that this illustrious person is hereby possessed of divine dignity, sufficient to make full atonement for the sins of men by his sufferings and death, even though sin be accounted an infinite evil; and that he hath all-sufficient power to raise himself from the dead, to ascend to heaven, and fulfil the blessed works for which thou hast exalted him, and to govern and judge the world in thine appointed time.

I believe also thy blessed Spirit hath almighty power and influence to do all thy will, to instruct men effectually in divine truths, to change the hearts of fallen mankind from sin to holiness, to carry on thy work of illumination, sanctification, and consolation on the souls of all thy children, and to bring them safe to the heavenly world. I yield myself up joyfully and thankfully to this method of thy salvation, as it is revealed in thy gospel.

But I acknowledge my darkness still. I want to have this wonderful doctrine of the all-sufficience of thy Son and Spirit, for these divine works, made a little plainer. May not thy humble creature be permitted to know what share they can have in thy deity? Is it a vain and sinful curiosity to desire to have this article set in such a light, as may not diminish the eternal glory of the unity of the true God, nor of the supremacy of Thee the Father of all.

Hadst thou informed me, gracious Father, in any place of thy word, that this divine doctrine is not to be understood by men, and yet they were required to believe it, I would have subdued all my curiosity to faith, and submitted my wandering and doubtful imaginations, as far as it was possible, to the holy and wise determinations of thy word. But I cannot find thou hast any where forbid me to understand it, or to make these enquiries. My conscience is the best natural light thou hast put within me, and since thou hast given me the scriptures, my own conscience bids me search the scriptures, to find out truth and eternal life. It bids me try all things, and hold fast that which is good. And thy own word, by the same expressions, encourages this holy practice. I have, therefore, been long searching into this divine doctrine, that I may pay thee due honour with understanding. Sure I ought to know the God whom I worship, whether he be one pure and simple being, or whether thou art a threefold deity, consisting of the Father, the Son, and the holy Spirit.

Dear and blessed God, hadst thou been pleased, in any one plain scripture, to have informed me which of the different opinions about the holy Trinity, among the contending parties of Christians, had been true, thou knowest with how much zeal, satisfaction, and joy my unbiassed heart would have opened itself to receive and embrace the divine discovery. Hadst thou told me plainly, in any single text, that the Father, Son, and holy Spirit, are three real distinct Persons in thy divine nature, I had never suffered myself to be bewildered in so many doubts, nor embarrassed with so many strong fears of assenting to the mere inventions of men, instead of divine doctrine; but I should have humbly and immediately accepted thy words, so far as it was possible for me to understand them as the only rule of my faith. Or, hadst thou been pleased so to express and include this proposition in the several scattered parts of thy book, from whence my reason and conscience might with ease find out, and with certainty infer this doctrine, I should have joyfully employed all my reasoning powers, with their utmost skill and activity, to have found out this inference, and ingrafted it into my soul.

Thou hast taught me, holy Father, by thy prophets, that the way of holiness in the times of the gospel, or under the kingdom of the Messiah, will be a high-way, a plain and easy path; so that the wayfaring man, or the stranger, though a fool, shall not err therein. And thou hast called the poor and the ignorant, the mean and foolish things of this world, to the knowledge of thyself and thy Son, and taught them to receive and partake of the salvation which thou hast provided. But how can such weak creatures ever take in so strange, so difficult, and so abstruse a doctrine as this; in the explication and defence whereof, multitudes of men, even men of learning and piety, have lost themselves in infinite subtleties of dispute, and endless mazes of darkness? And can this strange and perplexing notion of three real Persons going to make up one true God, be so necessary and so important a part of that Christian doctrine, which, in the Old Testament and the New, is represented as so plain and so easy, even to the meanest understandings?

O thou Searcher of hearts who knowest all things, I appeal to thee, concerning the sincerity of my enquiries into these discoveries of thy word. Thou knowest me, thou hast seen me, and hast tried my heart towards thee: if there be any lurking hypocrisy in my heart, any secret bias towards any thing but truth, uncover it, O Father of lights, and banish it from my soul for ever. If thine eye discovers the least spark of criminal prejudice in any corner of my soul, extinguish it utterly, that I may not be led astray from the truth, in matters of such importance, by the least glance of error or mistake.

Thou art witness, O my God, with what diligence, with what constancy and care, I have read and searched thy holy word, how early and late, by night and by day, I have been making these enquiries. How fervently have I been seeking thee on my bended knees, and directing my humble addresses to thee, to enlighten my darkness, and to shew me the meaning of thy word, that I may learn what I must believe, and what I must practise with regard to this doctrine, in order to please thee, and obtain eternal life!

Great God, who seest all things, thou hast beheld what busy temptations have been often fluttering about my heart, to call it off from these laborious and difficult enquiries, and to give up thy word and thy gospel as an unintelligible book, and betake thyself to the light of nature and reason: but thou hast been pleased by thy divine power to scatter these temptations, and fix my heart and my hope again upon that Saviour and that eternal life, which thou hast revealed in thy word, and proposed therein, to our knowledge and our acceptance. Blessed be the name of my God, that has not suffered me to abandon the gospel of his Son Jesus! and blessed be that holy Spirit that has kept me attentive to the truth delivered in thy gospel, and inclined me to wait longer in my search of these divine truths under the hope of thy gracious illumination.

I humbly call thee to witness, O my God, what a holy jealousy I ever wear about my heart, lest I should do the slightest dishonour to thy supreme Majesty, in any of my enquiries or determinations. Thou seest what a religious fear, and what a tender solicitude I maintain on my soul, lest I should think or speak any thing to diminish the grandeurs and honours of thy Son Jesus, my dear Mediator, to whom I owe my everlasting hopes. Thou knowest how much afraid I am of speaking one word, which may be construed into a neglect of thy blessed Spirit, from whom I hope I am daily receiving happy influences of light and strength. Guard all the motions of my mind, O almighty God, against every thing that borders upon these dangers. Forbid my thoughts to indulge, and forbid my pen to write one word, that should sink those grand ideas which belong to thyself, or thy Son, or thy holy Spirit. Forbid it, O my God, that ever I should be so unhappy as to unglorify my Father, my Saviour, or my Sanctifier, in any of my sentiments or expressions concerning them.

Blessed and faithful God, hast thou not promised that the meek thou wilt guide in judgment, the meek thou wilt teach thy way? Hast thou not told us by Isaiah thy prophet, that thou wilt bring the blind by a way which they knew not, and wilt lead them in paths which they have not known? Hast thou not informed us, by thy prophet Hosea, that if we follow on to know the Lord, then we shall know him? Hath not thy Son, our Saviour, assured us, that our heavenly Father will give his holy Spirit to them who ask him? And is he not appointed to guide us into all truth? Have I not sought the gracious guidance of thy good Spirit continually? Am I not truly sensible of my own darkness and weakness, my dangerous prejudices on every side, and my utter insufficiency for my own conduct? Wilt thou leave such a poor creature bewildered among a thousand perplexities, which are raised by the various opinions and contrivances of men to explain thy divine truth.

Help me, heavenly Father, for I am quite tired and weary of these human explainings, so various and uncertain. When wilt thou explain it to me thyself, O my God, by the secret and certain dictates of thy Spirit, according to the intimations of thy word? nor let any pride of reason, nor any affectation of novelty, nor any criminal bias whatsoever, turn my heart aside from hearkening to these divine dictates of thy word and thy Spirit. Suffer not any of my native corruptions, nor the vanity of my imagination to cast a mist over my eyes, while I am searching after the knowledge of thy mind and will, for my eternal salvation.

I entreat, O most merciful Father, that thou wilt not suffer the remnant of my short life to be wasted in such endless wanderings in quest of thee and thy Son Jesus, as a great part of my past days have been; but let my sincere endeavours to know thee, in all the ways whereby thou hast discovered thyself in thy word, be crowned with such success, that my soul being established in every needful truth by thy holy Spirit, I may spend my remaining moments according to the rules of thy gospel, and may with all the holy and happy creation ascribe glory and honour, wisdom and power to thee, who sittest upon the throne, and to the Lamb.

[1] Aniol, Scott I. Was Isaac Watts a Unitarian? Athanasian Trinitarianism and the boundary of Christian fellowship, Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal 22 (2017): 91–103, 2017. http://www.dbts.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/I.-Aniol-2.2-Final.pdf.

[2] Actually, the Athanasian Creed, in a meta-statement, says, “Haec est fides catholica, quam nisi quisque fideliter firmiterque crediderit, salvus esse non poterit,” that is, “This is the catholic faith: one cannot be saved without believing it firmly and faithfully.” Watts’s actual agreement, importantly, did not include this statement.

[3] Watts never wrote, as far as I know, about the Orthodox churches. His critiques of the Roman Catholic Church and “Romish” elements in the Anglican Church were quite harsh, but based on Scripture and political considerations. After all, his father had been imprisoned for his non-conformist beliefs.

Note: I received some excellent comments on my essay, and this has prompted me to rewrite the essay. I hope it is clearer.

My inquiry started with a song in the 1991 edition of The Sacred Harp: STAFFORD, 78. It has a pretty little fuging tune by Daniel Read, but its words, by Isaac Watts, are problematic to many:

See what a living stone
The builders did refuse,
Yet God hath built His Church thereon,
In spite of env’ous Jews.

Many people bump up against this song, considering it antisemitic to sing, and so many people will choose not to lead or sing it. It has already been announced, informally, that the text to STAFFORD will be changed in the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp[1].

This essay is not about whether we should or should not retain these words in the 2025 edition, or whether we should sing these words.

Here’s what it is about: I have been wondering for some time about Watts’s attitude towards Jews, and what Watts means in this particular verse.

Get ready for a deep dive.

Let’s start by looking at this poem. It comes from Watts’s Psalms of David, Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, specifically Psalm 118, verses 22-26. In the King James version, this is:

²²  The stone which the builders refused
is become the head stone of the corner.
²³  This is the Lord’s doing;
it is marvellous in our eyes.
²⁴  This is the day which the Lord hath made;
we will rejoice and be glad in it.

²⁵  Save now, I beseech thee, O Lord:
O Lord, I beseech thee, send now prosperity.
²⁶  Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord:
we have blessed you out of the house of the Lord.

This is one of the so-called Hallel psalms, a “fixed part of the [ancient] Jewish cycle of autumn feasts and Passover[2],” and it took on a Messianic role in the writings of the New Testament, which applies the rejected stone becoming the cornerstone to the death and resurrection of Jesus. The gospels quote this psalm as the acclamation cry of the crowds as Jesus enters Jerusalem as the humble king and descendant of David, and this psalm has been used in Palm Sunday celebrations from the early days of the church until today. “The N(ew) T(estament) identifies Jesus as ‘the one who comes in the name of the Lord[3]’.”

In the New Testament recounting of the last week of Jesus’s life, there are three or four groups identified as having rejected Jesus as the Messiah: the Jewish religious leaders, especially Herod and the Sanhedrin; the secular Roman leaders (in particular, Pontius Pilate); the crowd of Jews to whom Pilate turns in order to avoid his own choices; and the Roman soldiers who carry out the execution. The only supporters are the Jewish followers of Jesus, who are powerless to change the course of what happens, but who act as witnesses to his death, prepare him for burial, and witness his resurrection. This especially includes the Jewish women among his followers, John “the beloved disciple”, and two Jewish leaders who are secret supporters (Nicodemus and Joseph). Most of his Jewish disciples flee, deny they know him, or, in Judas’s case, actively bring about his death by betraying him. His only supporters are Jewish, his “rejectors” were a mix of Jews and Romans.

There are two places in the passion narrative where envy is used,[4] in the gospels of Matthew and Mark. Pilate offers to “release unto the people a prisoner,” and offers them Jesus. But the people, stirred up by the Jewish leadership, want a man named Barabbas released instead. Mark’s gospel describes the leadership as “the elders and scribes and the whole council,” specifically noting “the chief priests had delivered (Jesus to Pilate) for envy.” In Matthew, the leadership is called “all the chief priests and elders of the people,” and Pilate “knew that for envy they had delivered him.” From the context, it appears that the Jewish leadership is envious that the number of Jesus’s followers is increasing. This envy is specifically predicated of the Jewish leadership.

Watts’s poem is, of course, more than one verse. The second verse continues:

The scribe and angry priest
Reject thine only Son;
Yet on this Rock shall Zion rest,
As the chief corner-stone.

Watts focuses on the Jewish leaders (“the scribe and angry priest”), following the gospel account closely here. He identifies the leaders as those who fulfill the role of the rejecting builders of Psalm 118[5].

However, Watts often turns notes that both the Jews and the Gentiles of his time rejected Jesus. For example, in his Short View of Scripture History he cites Acts 4:26, 27: “when Herod and Pontius Pilate, and the people, both Gentiles and Jews, all rose up against Jesus of Nazareth, and put him to death” as a fulfillment of Psalm 2: “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?”

In Watts’s sermon, None Excluded from Hope[6], preached on Romans 1: 16[7], he stresses the failure of both Jews and Gentiles of the past, as well as those of his present age, to follow Jesus, and also believes the way is still open to both Jews and Gentiles.

Watts (as I wrote in my previous essay) was more than a hymn lyricist: he was a pastor, theologian, philosopher, and logician. I think it is fair to say that his general outlook was one of “reason within the bounds of religion,” in Nicholas Wolterstoff’s expression[8]. That is, Watts constrained his logical and theological work by what he understood the Christian scriptures to say. His outlook was deeply formed by his Dissenter background—that is, by his protestant, free-church understandings, as well as by the general understanding of Christian thought in the protestant and more specifically Reformed traditions.

Within this background, Watts views the Christian movement as successionist in nature. That is, God’s work in the world has passed through several stages, each succeeding the previous one. In fact, Watts wrote an entire book on this topic[9], his Harmony of Religion. In this work, he describes six “dispensations:” from the creation of Adam to humanity’s fall; from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to Christ, and then the current Christian dispensation. This is to be followed by a Last Judgment. When Watts talks about Jews, he is almost always viewing them through this lens; in particular the “Abrahamical” and “Mosaical” dispensations.

So, this, then, controls so much of Watts’s attitude towards Jews: they are people in and of the past, whose covenant with God has been succeeded by the coming of Christ and the Christian dispensation. What does this mean, in practical terms, for how he interacts with the Jews of his own time?

It is remarkable that contemporary Jews are essentially absent from the writings of Isaac Watts. He barely writes of them at all. Part of this is because of the state of Jewry in England during his lifetime. The Jews had been expelled from England in 1290 by Edward I, and it wasn’t until the mid 1650s (that is, just two decades before Watts’s birth) that Jews were allowed to return. They were allowed to return for a variety of economic and socio-religious reasons, but there were not many Jews in London during Watts’s lifetime. Watts’s sermon, None Excluded from Hope, is the only reference I could find in his writing to contemporary Jews at all. He is both harsh and gentle with them:

When we see one and another of the Jewish nation in this great city, and think of their blindness and their zeal for the idle traditions of their teachers, and observe their ignorant rage against our blessed Saviour: when we behold the vain superstitions of their worship, the thick darkness that hangs upon them under the brightest beams of gospel-light, and their wide distance from salvation we should let our eyes affect our hearts, and drop a tear of compassion upon their souls.

Despite Watts’s tear of compassion, these are uncomfortable words for me to read. I am discomforted, not by Watts’s belief that the hope for Jews and Gentiles alike is found in Jesus Christ, but his use of dismissive words like idle traditions, ignorant rage, and vain superstitions. These seem unworthy of a truth-seeking person such as Watts, and a sign of a profound ignorance of Jewish beliefs and practices.

Still, we should contrast Watts to other attitudes taken by Christian leaders. Martin Luther thought all Jewish buildings and holy books should be destroyed, all rabbis should be forbidden from teaching children, and Jews could (and probably should) be expelled from Christian countries. We see none of this in Watts: Jews have a special positive relationship with God, and, like the Gentiles, are not excluded from hope. Unlike many, including Oliver Cromwell, he didn’t view the Jews as useful as a target for conversion that would presage the second coming of Christ. He never repeats the horrific blood libel[10]. For Watts, Jews, like Gentiles, need the gospel of Christ. But, for the most part, “the Jews” for Watts are a historical people, existing only in the past.

This is all the more remarkable because the church where Watts preached was in close proximity to the synagogues in London. In 1708, Isaac Watts moved the meeting house of his growing congregation a few miles from its location on Mark Lane to St Mary Axe Street, where it would remain for the rest of his life. It was a short distance to the Great Synagogue, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue (which is still in use as a synagogue), and the Bury Street Synagogue.

So, in brief: Watts thought both Jews and Gentiles required salvation through Jesus Christ, and that the plain reading of the gospel passages implicated the Jewish religious leadership in the death of Christ. The coming of Christ opened up a new chapter in God’s relationship to the world, and what became the Christian church succeeded the time of the Jews. For the most part, Watts only considered Jews as a people of the past. Despite literally worshipping within blocks of the synagogues of London, he didn’t seem to have much of an opinion, positive or negative, towards Jews in London or other contemporaneous Jews. He pitied them, when he thought about them at all, but did not incite hate against them.  

That’s the end of the essay, but I actually do want to write about whether “in spite of envious Jews” has a place in our songbooks, that is, a song we can sing with good intent and without doing harm.

I don’t think so, and it is a good thing that the text will be removed from the new edition. Watts intended it to refer to the Jewish leadership, but it takes a long while to get to that reading, especially for modern singers, given the long and tragic history of Christian persecution of the Jews. What might have been merely descriptive or mildly unnuanced for Watts becomes ill-intentioned and harmful in the shadow of the Holocaust.

Further, I think it was at least a dangerous line to sing when Watts wrote it, given how easy it has been to conflate the Jewish leadership who had a part in Jesus’s death with the Jewish people at all times and places. It ignores his Jewish followers and disciples, and ignores the Gentile Romans who carried out the actual execution. Sometimes, the constraints of poetry cause a poet to fail to describe the whole truth.

Watts would be the first to admit his own imperfections, even as he strove for a reasonable but passionate Christian life. When I see Watts’s failure here, I drop a tear of compassion for his soul, but I also want to interrogate my own failures: “show my forgetful feet the way that leads to joys on high, where knowledge grows without decay, and love shall never die.”

[1] The 2012 Cooper edition of The Sacred Harp has a related song, THE LIVING STONE. It is an arrangement of STAFFORD by W.C. Givens. It retained the verse discussed here, but added a second verse as well.

[2] Waltner, James H.2006. Psalms, Believers Church Bible Commentary, Herald Press.

[3] Ibid.

[4] In the previous version of this essay, I wrote: In none of the accounts are any of the Jews said to be acting out of envy. I am not completely sure, but I think Watts is here referring to a passage in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome (made up of both Gentile and Jewish followers of Jesus), where he states that he hopes his own “office” of preaching the gospel to Gentiles will provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, that is, make his fellow Jews envious of God’s gospel in spreading to the Gentiles. It’s also possible Watts is using “envy” in Samuel Johnson’s minor sense of “malice, malignity” in general as opposed to the specific “pain felt and malignity conceived at the sight of excellence or happiness.” This was incorrect and an embarrassing error!

[5] I find it interesting that a member of the Jesus leadership, Nicodemus, comes to Jesus’s defense and helps prepare his body for burial in John’s gospel.

[6] I have transcribed it here. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kj1wIkz1_rCNuRwPV83PZ-m88fWmxHZr73vxc48vBIc/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.m7mrt04018hl

[7] Romans 1: 16. The Gospel of Christ, it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

[8] Wolterstoff, Nicholas, 1984. Reason Within the Bounds of Religion, 2^nd Edition, Eerdmans.

[9] Watts, Isaac, 1742. The Harmony of All the Religions Which God Ever Prescribed. The edition I used is on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_the-harmony-of-all-the-r_watts-isaac_1742 

[10] “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” might apply here, but given Watts’s extensive writings, it’s likely that if he held these beliefs, he would have expressed them in one form or another.