and died in 1570. He was one of the fifty musicians who composed the tunes for the French version of the Psalter, printed in 1545. But some historians of the tune are of the opinion that it was composed by Louis Bourgeois for the German Psalter of which he was editor in 1551-52. In England the tune was set to the One Hundredth Psalm, from which it became known as The Hundredth; but in 1696, when Tate and Brady published their New Version, the word Old was used to show that the tune was the one in use in the previous Psalter, edited by Sternhold and Hopkins.

Old Hundred is solemn in its strains and magnificent in its harmony, and the tie that binds it to the Great Doxology the onward sweep of time cannot dissever.

D

VII.

The Founder of Our Hymnology.

URING the first sixteen hundred years of the Christian era there were scarcely any

metrical songs in which the people could unite in singing. The few such hymns which may have been written in England before the time of Isaac Watts, were not in common use, "partly because of the apathy of the clergy and the indifference of the people;" but chiefly because "they were wanting in animating force and spiritual power." From 1561 to 1696, the only singing heard in the Church was from the old version of the Psalms by Sternhold and Hopkins, and even the singing of the metrical Psalms was monopolized by the choir a condition that seemed to preclude any demand "to create a supply of hymns."

In our day we can hardly imagine how wearisome it was to the flesh to listen to the monotonous psalm-singing of the Puritan fathers. In Alice Morse Earle's delightful book, The Sabbath in Puritan New England, is an incident that serves to show the condition of Church hymnody in the early part of the eighteenth century. It is told of the Rev. Dr. West, who preached at Dartmouth in 1726, that he forgot one Sabbath morning to bring his sermon to meeting. He gave out a Psalm,

walked a quarter of a mile to his home, got his sermon, and was back in his pulpit before the Psalm was finished.

In 1675 a young mother, carrying an infant, was frequently seen walking to and fro in front of an old jail at Southampton, England. Many times a day she could be seen holding it up at arm's length before the jail window that a prisoner might see the face of the child. The child was Isaac Watts, and the prisoner was its father. The parents were eminently pious, and in the reign of Charles II., Mr. Watts twice suffered imprisonment on account of his religious convictions.

In precocity, Isaac Watts was one of the wonders of his time. The story of his life says that he began the study of Latin at the age of four, Greek at nine, French at ten, and Hebrew at thirteen. He was so assiduous in his studies that his constitution was permanently injured. When sixteen years old he was so bright in scholarship and lovable in disposition that Dr. Speed, and others of Southampton, offered to give him a free education in a university, which, if accepted, meant an eventual ordination in the Established Church. But the little Dissenter, with a courage and purpose which indicated the soul-standard of the coming man, declared that he would not forsake the denomination to which his parents belonged, for the highest honors the university could confer upon him; and is it not rational to presume that this decision made it possible for

Isaac Watts to become the founder of our Christian hymnology?

Returning from Church one Sunday morning when in his eighteenth year, he complained to his father that the hymns were intolerably dull. His ear for melody had suffered after the fashion of a person who has his sensitive nerves shocked by the sound of a file sharpening a saw. He had the good sense to tell his father that he thought he could write better hymns himself. Deacon Watts was wise, as all deacons ought to be, and having some poetical taste himself, and placing large confidence in the boy's judgment, he urged him to try his hand; and on the following Sunday morning the congregation at the Independent Church at Southampton, was invited to join in singing an original hymn by Isaac Watts, Behold the Glories of the Lamb. It is worth while to say that this hymn, written in such peculiar circumstances, has had an extensive use in Great Britain for one hundred and fifty years, and is still found in some American hymnals.

From the date of this incident began the signal triumphs of Watts in hymn-writing. With one exception, that of Charles Wesley, the world has seen nothing that compares with his contributions to the songs of the Church. He wrote nearly seven hundred hymns. He wrote some of his noblest hymns at a time when there existed a deep prejudice against the use of songs in Church worship. Dr. W. Garrett Horder says in The Hymn Lover, that

so strong was this prejudice, and so high did feeling run against new hymns, that many a Church in England was rent asunder by the proposal to introduce them in Sunday services; and the original Church of which the late Charles H. Spurgeon was pastor, was almost hopelessly divided because a majority of the members voted to use Christian songs in the sanctuary.

The wall of prejudice that Watts faced in offering his hymns to the Churches was so invincible that it required many years to overcome it. He published his Hymns and Spiritual Songs in 1707, which was the first effort made by any hymn-writer to supersede the Psalter. But his finest hymns so full of exalted praise, were called "Watts's whims," and it was some twenty or thirty years before his best hymns found their way into common use. But when adopted they became an extraordinary power, and for a whole century Watts ruled the Independent Churches as no other hymn-writer has since his day. His hymns still have a strong hold upon the universal religious mind, and in Calvinistic Churches between one hundred and one hundred and fifty of his hymns are in use. Many of them have been patched and rent by profane hymnmenders, but somebody has said that there is enough of Watts left in them to remind one of the saying of Horace: "You may know the remains of a poet even when he is torn to pieces."

Dr. Watts passed two-thirds of his life of seven