Lord’s Day, Vol. 3 No. 22

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

He was only five feet tall, with a large head made bigger by a huge wig, and with a hooked nose and a frail and sickly body. Such was the appearance of the illustrious Dr. Isaac Watts (1674-1748). As a young man he had proposed to a lovely lady. While rejecting his proposal, she said, “I like the jewel but not the setting.” Illnesses plagued him throughout his life, and for most of his last 30 years, he was an invalid.

But his brilliant mind refused to be subdued by his frail body, and he wrote a prodigious number of books and more than six hundred hymns, including such enduring ones as “Jesus Shall Reign”, “O God Our Help in Ages Past” and the evergreen Christmas hymn “Joy to the World”.

Dr. Watts’ songs prepared the way for the great revivals under the Wesleys and Whitefield. He was memorialised in Westminster Abby with a tablet picturing him writing at a table while angels whisper songs in his ear. Watts was driven to write religious verses due to lamentable singing in the churches of his day. He said, “The singing of God’s praise is the part of worship nighest heaven, and its performance among us is the worst on earth.”

One Sunday, after returning from a morning worship he considered to be dreadful, he complained to his father that the hymns sung at that time were so tuneless. His father smiled and suggested that he provided something better. That afternoon, he wrote his first hymn. During the evening service the hymn was lined out and sung, and thus began the revolution of English hymn singing.

Watts went on to create the model for English hymns and became known as “the Father of English Hymnody.” Watts’ Hymns and Spiritual Songs, published in 1707, became the first hymnbook in English. Watts reached the high point of his devotional poetry with his classic, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.”

The words in this hymn speak of a believer’s response to the matchless sacrifice of Christ on the cross. We confess our poverty of language when dealing with this sublime theme that deserves the eloquence of angels. But Isaac Watts comes as close as human expression can to a worthy response to Calvary.

The words were inspired by the apostle Paul’s impassioned declaration in Galatians 6:14, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…”. In the opening line, “survey” suggests not mere sight but contemplation on the meaning of Calvary. The cross is “wondrous” because the instrument of death became God’s means of redeeming a lost world. “Prince of Glory” speaks of the highest exaltation of the Saviour. In the light of the cross, we are led to “pour contempt” on our pride. In the final couplet of the third stanza Watts lost himself in adoration until even the crown of thorns became more precious than a king’s diadem.

The hymn climaxes with a realization and surrender to this amazing love of Christ that “demands my soul, my life, my all.”

When I survey the wondrous cross

            On which the Prince of Glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss,

            And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it Lord, that I should boast

            Save in the death of Christ, my God;

All the vain things that charm me most,

            I sacrificed them to His blood.

See, from his head, his hands, his feet,

       Sorrow and love flow mingled down;

Did e’ver such love and sorrow meet,

            Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

            That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

            Demands my soul, my life, my all.

May the imagery, insight, and passion of this enduring hymn lead us to a deeper devotion to the Son of God, who on a felon’s cross, paid the supreme price for our salvation.

(Extracted and edited from Henry Gariepy’s Song’s in the Night.)

Yours lovingly,

Pr. Lek Aik Wee