ISAAC WATTS.

WRITER OF CHRISTIAN HYMNS.

HE "Hymns," "Psalms," and "Songs for Children" of Dr. Watts have been more read and committed to memory, have exerted more holy influences, and made more lasting impressions for good upon the human heart than the productions of any other writer of verse. But Isaac Watts does not hold high rank as a poet, and during his lifetime was quite as much known as a philosopher and theologian as for his poetical works. Indeed, his "Logic" and "Improvement of the Mind" may still be regarded as standard books. His poems are all of a religious character, many of them having been written for children. He versified the entire book of Psalms, and many of his "Hymns find a place in the hymn-books of all Christian denominations. It is their ready adaptation to musical rendering, their broad Christian spirit, and their beautiful and tender simplicity, rather than their artistic merits as poems, which have endeared these hymns to so many and such widely different people.

Isaac Watts was a precocious child; he composed verses, as we are told, before he was three years old, began to study Latin at four, and could read easy authors at five. Being a Dissenter, he could not enter one of the Universities, but received a thorough education, and became tutor in a private family. In 1698 he was chosen assistant minister of the Independent congregation in Mark Lane, London, of which he became pastor in 1702. Owing to feeble health he resigned this charge, and in 1712 was invited by Sir Thomas Abney, of Abney Park, near London, to become an inmate of his family. Here he remained during the remaining thirty-six years of his life, preaching not infrequently and writing many books in prose and verse. He continued to receive from his congregation the salary which they insisted upon his accepting, and there were many and continuous evidences of the love and esteem in which he was held, not only by those of his immediate circle, but by the general public. He died in 1748, at the age of seventy-four.

"It is the plain promises of the Gospel," said he, near his death, "that are my support; and I bless God they are plain promises, and do not require much labor and pains to understand them, for I can do nothing now but look into my Bible for some promise to support me, and live upon that."

"He is one of the few poets," says Dr. Johnson, "with whom youth and

ignorance may be safely pleased; and happy will be that reader whose mind is disposed, by his verses or his prose, to copy his benevolence to man and his

reverence to God."