Edwin Paxton Hood

“ When you are in danger of life, I believe my sister is afraid to let me know the worst, for fear of affecting me too much. But as I feel old age daily advancing on myself, I am endeavouring to be ready for my removal hence; and though it gives a shock to nature when what has been long dear to one is taken away, yet reason and religion should teach us to expect it in these scenes of mortality and a dying world. Blessed be God for our immortal hopes, through the blood of Jesus, who has taken away the sting of death! What could such dying creatures do without the comforts of the Gospel? ”

“ There are Christians still who delight in this doubtful method of expressing and setting forth the holiest affections. Watts in all his religious works had at all times the ardent and fervent words of a poetic and imaginative nature, but he considerably pruned both thought and speech as the years passed in study and seclusion brought a riper wisdom; he did not repress the ardours of the heart, but he gave to their expression a chastened and colder form; he was not satisfied indeed by light without love, but he clothed that love with a more sacred reticence. ”

“ It has been my frequent prayer, and it will be my joy, to see your temper suited to your work, and to hear that you employ your studies and your style for the support of truth and godliness in the spirit of the Gospel, that is, in the spirit of meekness and love. And I conclude with a hearty request to Heaven that your wit may be all sanctified, that you may minister holy things with honour and purity and great success, and you may become as eminent and public an example of piety, meekness, heavenly-mindedness, and love to all the saints, as your own soul wishes and desires. ”

“ Very happily he says, “Preachers talk reason and religion to their auditories in vain, if they do not make the argument so short as to come within their grasps, and give a frequent rest to their thoughts; they must break the Bread of Life into pieces to feed children with it, and part their discourse into distinct propositions, to give the ignorant a plain scheme of any one doctrine, and enable them to comprehend or retain it. The auditors of the first kind of preacher have some confusion in their knowledge, the hearers of the last have scarce any knowledge at all.” ”

“ When he presents before you his greater thoughts his style is indeed clear, but you feel that it is as when “morning is spread upon the mountains” before sunrise, or as when evening lingers in the soft and rosy light after sunset, there is something somewhere behind, some orb of light which spreads out all that roseate glow; in his Ontology and Logic he is concise and distinct, as we have said; you may almost call him a neat writer. He has a wonderful power of accumulating particulars, a singular felicity in discriminating ideas. ”

“ But whoever undertakes the noble work, let him bring with him a soul devoted to piety, an exalted genius, and withal a studious application; for David’s harp abhors a profane finger and disdains to answer to an unskilful or a careless touch. A meaner pen may imitate at a distance; but a complete translation or a just paraphrase demands a rich treasury of diction, an exalted fancy, a quick taste of devout passion, together with judgment, strict and severe, to retrench every luxuriant line, and to maintain a religious sovereignty over the whole work. ”

“ Must a preacher divide his works by the breaks of a minute watch, or let it run on incessantly like the flowing stream of sand in the hour-glass?” And thus he inquires, “Can a long purling sound awaken a sleepy conscience? Can you make the arrow wound where it will not stick? Where all the discourse vanishes from the remembrance, can you imagine the soul to be profited or enriched? When you brush over the closed eyelid with a feather, did you ever find it give light to the blind? have any of your soft harangues, your continued threads of silken eloquence, ever raised the dead?” ”

“ Watts, as we have seen, lived so much in retirement and retreat, and was so constant a sufferer from the infirmities of health, that little is known in the way of incident and anecdote of his life. In a sense, indeed, he lived constantly before the eyes of men, for his industry, when he was capable of industry, must have been immense; he must have read extensively, he thought deeply, and he possessed not only an active but a facile pen, which appears to have served him very readily when he desired to translate his thoughts into language. ”

“ I have long thought the love of popular applause a meanness which a philosophy far inferior to that of our Divine Master, might have us to conquer. But to be esteemed by eminently great and good men, to whom we are intimately known, appears to me not only one of the most solid attestations of some real worth, but, next to the approbation of God and our own consciences, one of its most valuable rewards. ”

“ Go, dress up all the virtues of human nature in all the beauties of your oratory, and declaim aloud on the praise of social virtue and the amiable qualities of goodness, till your hearts or lungs ache, among the looser herds of mankind, and you will ever find, as your heathen fathers have done before you, that the wild appetites and passions of men are too violent to be restrained by such mild and silken language. ”

“ Yes, my honoured friend, you will, I hope, cheerfully endure a little longer continuance in life amidst all its infirmities from an assurance that, while God is pleased to maintain the exercise of your reason, it is hardly possible you should live in vain to the world or yourself. Every day and every trial is brightening your crown, and rendering you still more and more meet for an inheritance among the saints in light. Every word which you drop from the pulpit has now surely its peculiar weight. ”

“ Their works formed a library; they had not the necessities of our times to call them away, nor was it the age of magazines and reviews, and the lighter shallops of literature. The age immediately preceding that of Watts, and his own age, present to us the forms of many men, who in some sheltered nook passed a life unprofitable—ought we to say inglorious?—satisfied with the spoils of learning, they lived a life of barrenness; they sought wisdom for her own sake, neither for the use it enabled them to confer on others, or the fame it conferred on themselves ”

“ I hope God will in mercy to many thousands, myself in particular, prolong your life many years. I own this does not seem a kind wish to you, but I think you will be content to bear the infirmities of flesh some years longer to be an instrument in the hands of God toward the salvation of your weak and distressed brethren. The joys of heaven cannot fade, but will be as glorious millions of ages to come as they are now, and what a moment will the longest life appear when it comes to be compared with eternity! ”

“ There is an intense and immediate objectiveness about Watts’ hymns; praise, like a clear and glowing firmament, encompasses them all, and the objects of adoration revolve, like the firmamental lights, clear and distinct to the vision; they are often interior and meditative, but they never indicate a merely morbid introspection; they seem to glow in the light of the objects of their adoration: again and again we are impressed by their reverent effulgence. ”

“ Since the great affliction with which it pleased Almighty God to visit me by the death of a most valuable and only son, I found myself happiest in almost an entire retreat from the world, and being of a sudden called into a place where I remembered to have seen the utmost of its hurry and vanity exerted, terrified my imagination to the last degree, and I shed tears every time I was alone at the thought of what I expected to encounter ”

“ Indeed there was something ludicrous in the poetry of the time; and the great genius of Pope, which really was equal to anything in verse, seemed almost to struggle in vain against the pedantic rules he imposed upon himself. It was the age of fantastic ornament and of formal symmetry, of artificial gardening, of trimmed yews, when even Nature herself in her trees, hedgerows, and flower-beds was made to look ridiculous. A sort of tulip-mania, a false admiration in colour and in form, took [59] possession not merely of the speculators in the market, but of the devotees of the fine arts. ”

“ Watts ever appeared with a reputation on such a variety of subjects as he has, both as a prose writer and a poet. However,” he adds, “this I may venture to say, there is no man now living of whose works so many have been diffused at home and abroad, which are in such constant use, and translated into such a variety of languages, many of which I doubt not will remain more durable monuments of his great talents than any representation I can make of them, though it were to be graven on pillars of brass. Thus did he shine as an ingenious man and a scholar.” ”

“ The sun in the heavens is the most glorious of all visible beings: his sovereign influence has a most astonishing extent through all the planetary globes, and bestows light and heat upon all of them. It is the sun that gives life and motion to all [287] the infinite varieties of the animal world in the earth, air, and water. It draws out the vegetable juices from the earth, and covers the surface of it with trees, herbs, and flowers. It is the sun that gives beauty and colour to all the millions of bodies round the globe ”

“ What will our hearers think of us when we succeed the greatest men of our last age in nothing else but their pulpits? Is there no certainty in the words of truth? Was Dr. Owen’s church to be taught another Jesus, that the Son and Holy Spirit were only two powers in the Divine nature? Shall the men who planted and watered so happy a part of the vineyard have all their labours rendered in vain? Shall a fountain in the same place send forth sweet water and bitter? What need is there of a charge?” [33]
On the whole, it is well to refer to this controversy. ”

“ And why may not the human soul and body of our glorified Saviour be thus furnished with such an amazing extent of knowledge and power, and yet not be truly infinite? Let us dwell a little longer upon these delightful contemplations. If a soul had but a full knowledge and command of all the atoms of one solid foot of matter, which according to modern philosophy is infinitely divisible, what strange and astonishing influences would it have over this world of ours? ”

“ And beneath all these subjects is spread out a mass of wise and useful observations, the result, the reader thinks, of a life of earnest and careful study. A wise and candid judgment pervades every page. A confidence in the writer as in one who is not writing merely, but who is giving to the reader a portion of himself, grows in the mind. Watts was himself an exceedingly careful student. ”

“ To know and be known, to love and to be beloved, are, perhaps, such essential ingredients of complete felicity that it cannot subsist without them. And it may be doubted whether such mutual knowledge and love, as seems requisite for this end, can be found in a nature absolutely simple in all respects. May we not then suppose that some distinctions in the Divine Being are of eternal necessity, in order to complete the blessedness of Godhead? Such a distinction as may admit, as a great man expresses it, of delicious society. ”

“ Unconverted people sing. They have airs and melodies wafted from the ground of the nature in which they live and have their being; and when they learn and feel their heritage of salvation and immortality, the joy in God through Jesus Christ demands its appropriate expression in suitable elevated strains and tones. And Christians feel their unity, not so much in reading or in preaching as in those great expressions which rise above the colder forms of the understanding, and touch each other at the centre of some great affection of faith or hope. ”

“ It is quite vain work to argue with those who take exception to these expressions. If they are not felt they will not be seen. If we say Watts was a mystic, the expression will astonish some of our readers. The hard abstract lines of cold creeds, and bodies of theology, suddenly in his [110] verse flashed out radiant and visible as planets in southern heavens; and his words expressing truths which seem cold in the creed of Calvin or the rigid framework of the confessions and catechisms of Puritanism, became like wings of ardent fire, tipped with seraphic light. ”

“ Watts was modest; in every estimate of himself he disclaimed any title to the rank of a poet; but in truth his powers, as manifested in his writings, whether we regard him as a preacher, theologian, or metaphysician, are all equally luminous and instructive. Beyond all these, a character exalted by seraphic piety and all-embracing charity makes the narrative of such a life well worthy of the study of all to whom it is pleasant to contemplate human nature in the finer proportions of genius, sanctified and illustrated by Divine grace. ”

“ SPIRIT OF THE HEBREW PSALMS.
“Moses, Deborah, and the princes of Israel; David, Asaph, Habakkuk, and all the saints under the Jewish state, sung their own joys and victories, their own hopes, and fears, and deliverances, as I hinted before; and why must we, under the Gospel, sing nothing else but the joys, hopes, and fears of Asaph and David? Why must Christians be forbid all other melody but what arises from the victories and deliverances of the Jews? ”

“ There is a land of pure delight, on the ground that it contains no recognition of, or praise to, the Redeemer. But, surely, as long as beautiful sights and beautiful sounds, the solemn gloom and glory of the everlasting hills, and the endlessness of the pure sky are to be apprehended by men, so long it must be not only a desirable, but an imperative thing, that they should all be transferred to the keys of the Christian organ and of Christian speech. ”

“ Rowe was a lady quite famous in her own time; to an elevated piety she united in her style of composition many of the faults of the age in which she lived; her works were tinctured by an ardent mode of expression little in harmony with the more frigid expressions of our own day. For Dr. Watts she entertained the highest esteem. She died suddenly, but in her cabinet were found letters for two or three of the friends who held the highest place in her affections, especially for the Countess of Hertford and Dr. Watts ”