Our Mortal State

Remember how short my time is: wherefore hast thou made all men in vain?
What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave? Selah.

The following hymn by Isaac Watts is the “Sixth Part” of his paraphrase of Psalm 89 “verse 47, &c.” which he called “Mortality and Hope.—A Funeral Psalm.” It was published in The Psalms of David, Imitated in the Language of the New Testament. The name makes clear the intent, to warn of the mortality of man – life how short and frail – but to also point to the hope that is found in Jesus Christ and his resurrection! The subtitle suggests this as an appropriate song or reading at a funeral.

1. Remember, Lord, our mortal state;
How frail our life! how short the date!
Where is the man that draws his breath,
Safe from disease, secure from death?

2. Lord, while we see whole nations die,
Our flesh and sense repine and cry;
Must death for ever rage and reign?
Or, hast thou made mankind in vain?

3. Where is the promise to the just?
Are not thy servants turned to dust?
But faith forbids these mournful sighs,
And sees the sleeping dust arise.

4. That glorious hour, that dreadful day
Wipes the reproach of saints away,
And clears the honour of thy word;
Awake our souls, and bless the Lord.

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) was an English independent (dissenting) minister, theologian, and hymn writer. Because of his prolific, original, and splendid poetry, he has been designated the “Father of English hymnody.” Watts was born in Southampton, Hampshire, England in 1674. He served as a pastor at the Mark Lane Congregational Chapel in London from about 1702 to 1712, but resigned due to poor health. He accepted an invitation from Sir Thomas Abney and Lady Mary Abney to live in Stoke Newington, where he remained the rest of his life.

In addition to hymns (for which he is best remembered), Watts also wrote on theology and logic. He died in 1748, in Stoke Newington and was buried in Bunhill Fields. Some of his best-known hymns include “Joy to the World,” “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” and “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past.”

The hymn is Long Meter and the recommended tune in some later printings of Watts’s “Psalms of David” is Pleyel’s (but apparently not the Pleyel’s we know in Sacred Harp, since it is a different meter). In The Sacred Harp 1991 Edition, two stanzas of this hymn were paired with the new tune Granville, written by Sacred Harp singer Judy Hauff of Chicago, Illinois.

Which service?

A pastor was at his church house one weekday morning looking around. He heard a noise out in the foyer and he went out to see what it was. He saw a little boy looking around at everything. So the preacher said, “Son, would you like me to show you around our building?”

The little boy replied, “I sure would!” 

The preacher began to show the boy around. They came to a place in a hallway where there was a plaque. The plaque had a lot of names on it. The little boy asked, “Who, who are all these people?” 

The pastor answered, “Those are the names of the ones who died in the service.”

The little boy looked very puzzled. He thought awhile and finally he asked, “Was that the morning service or the evening service?”

Probably some good information to know!

-- Copied

More John Leland

Captain Abner Lee, who lived near Lyme, Massachusetts, would have meetings in his house. He would bring in seats and a moveable pulpit. On one occasion he had Elder John Leland preach in his house, Captain Lee “said to Mr. Leland, ‘I do not know as you can put up with our wooden pulpit.’ He made no reply, but began his meeting. After preaching a while, he had occasion to notice the preaching the people had in old times; and noticed the difference between that and the popular doctrines of the day in which he lived. ‘In the days of the apostles, said he, they had wooden pulpits and golden preaching but now they have golden pulpits and wooden preaching. Give me a wooden pulpit and golden preaching, rather than golden pulpits and wooden preaching!”

From The Life, Conversion, Preaching, Travels, and Sufferings of Elias Smith, p. 227

John 13:1-17, Matthew Henry

What follows is four points on John 13:1-17, by the old English commentator Matthew Henry. In the past I have referred to these points by Henry for teaching/preaching on this passage. I believe they are helpful, and share them here for your edification.

I. Christ washed his disciples’ feet that he might give a proof of that great love wherewith he loved them; loved them to the end, vs. 1-2.

II. Christ washed his disciples’ feet that he might give an instance of his own wonderful humility, and show how lowly and condescending he was, and let all the world know how low he could stoop in love to his own. This is intimated, vs. 3-5.

III. Christ washed his disciples’ feet that he might signify to them spiritual washing, and the cleansing of the soul from the pollutions of sin. This is plainly intimated in his discourse with Peter upon it, vs. 6-11

IV. Christ washed his disciples’ feet to set before us an example. This explication he gave of what he had done, when he had done it, vs. 12-17.

Search After Happiness

I found the following in some old files, which I apparently wrote in June of 2020.

The Search After Happiness

The following hymn is an excerpt from A Search After Happiness: A Pastoral in Three Dialogues, written by “A Young Lady” (Hannah More), in 1762/1773.[1] In the second edition, the title was changed to The Search After Happiness: A Pastoral Drama, and this portion of the poem was expanded to seven 4-line stanzas.[2] The poem/hymn as used in The Sacred Harp and other shape-note books has some word changes, and only six stanzas (the third stanza is not used).

In later printings, the “Preface” explains the purpose of the “Pastoral Drama”:

The object of the following Poem, which was written in very early youth, was an earnest wish to furnish a substitute for the very improper custom, which then prevailed, of allowing plays, and those not always of the purest kind, to be acted by young Ladies in boarding schools. And it has afforded a serious satisfaction to the Author to learn that this little Poem, and likewise the Sacred Dramas, have very frequently been adopted to supply the place of those more dangerous amusements. If it may be still happily instrumental in promoting a regard to Religion and Virtue in the minds of young persons, and afford them an innocent, and perhaps not altogether unuseful, amusement in the exercise of recitation, the end for which it was originally composed, and the author’s utmost wish in its re-publication, will be fully answered.

In the drama this portion is sung by the character Florella, a young shepherdess.

1. While beauty and youth are in their full prime,
And folly and fashion affect our whole time;
O let not the phantom our wishes engage,
Let us live so in youth that we blush not in age.
 
2. The vain and the young may attend us a while,
But let not their flattery our prudence beguile;
Let us covet those charms that shall never decay
Nor listen to all that deceivers can say.
 
3. I sigh not for beauty, nor languish for wealth,
But grant me, kind Providence, virtue and health;
Then richer than kings, and far happier than they,
My days shall pass swiftly and sweetly away.
 
4. For when age steals on me, and youth is no more,
And the moralist Time shakes his glass at my door,
What pleasure in beauty or wealth can I find?
My beauty, my wealth, is a sweet peace of mind.
 
5. That peace! I’ll preserve it as pure as ’twas given
Shall last in my bosom an earnest of heaven;
For Virtue and Wisdom can warm the cold scene,
And sixty can flourish as gay as sixteen.
 
6. And when I the burden of life shall have borne,
And death with his sickle shall cut the ripe corn,
Reascend to my God without murmur or sigh,
I’ll bless the kind summons, and lie down and die.

The third stanza that Florella sings is:

How the tints of the rose, and the jess’mine’s perfume,[3]
The eglantine’s fragrance, the lilac’s gay bloom,
Tho’ fair and tho’ fragrant, unheeded may lie,
For that neither is sweet when Florella is by.

This is the stanza not used in songbooks. The other six stanzas are used with the tune Morality, number 136 in The Sacred Harp. It is in other shape-note tune books as well, such as The Southern Harmony. It can be found on YouTube sung at Waycross Primitive Baptist Church.

Hannah More was born February 2, 1745 in the village of Fishponds in Gloucestershire. She was a daughter of Jacob and Mary Grace More. He was a schoolmaster. She was taught by her father, then attended a girls’ school of her oldest sister Mary. Hannah later taught at the school, and wrote A Search After Happiness circa 1762.[4] She left teaching and earned most of her living through writing. After a religious conversion she became close friends of John Newton and& William Wilberforce. She was one of the most successful writers of her time. She died September 7, 1833 and is buried at All Saints Churchyard in Somerset, England.

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[1] A Search After Happiness: A Pastoral in Three Dialogues, A Young Lady, Bristol: S. Farley, 1773, pp. 30-31. The “Advertisement” in the Google version purported to be printed in 1773 strongly suggests that this is the first printed/book version of A Search After Happiness.
[2] The first printed version had 26 lines rather than 28 lines.
[3] The first version appears to have jessamine (jess’mine’s), while later versions change this to “jasmine.”

[4] The scan of the book at Google Books does not have a date printed, but it is believed to be from around 1762. However, Google Books dates it as 1766.

Going nowhere

“How many times we have heard a Preacher announce a text, and then immediately depart from it on an excursion over land and sea, and never come back to the text again. When the sermon is over we feel like saying what Mandy said to Sam after he had ridden the merry-go-round at the circus for one solid hour: ‘Sam, you’ve been gone an hour and spent a whole dollar, but you ain’t been nowhere!’ My father used to tell of a deacon who slipped a note on the preacher’s pulpit saying ‘Stick to your text—and some of it will stick to us.’ To advertise a text and then ignore it is fraudulent advertising!”

M. R. DeHaan, Bread For Each Day, Zondervan, 1962, June 30

Far From My Thoughts

THIS LINK contains a recording of Emily Creel leading Westford (“Far from my thoughts, vain world begone”) at the Rusk County Singing Convention. In addition to the thoughts of the hymn and its meaning, I also have pleasant memories of our friend Leon Ballinger loving and often leading this song.

The words are by Isaac Watts, and remind us of our delight in worshipping our Lord Jesus Christ – generally, in church, and in singings. Watts originally called it “The enjoyment of Christ; or, Delight in worship.” Daniel Read used three stanzas of it with his tune Westford. There are three more stanzas not used with the tune, which I print below the three that go with it. May this wonderful song always serve as a reminder to us that when we sing, we are delighting in worship!

1. Far from my thoughts, vain world, begone!
Let my religious hours alone:
Fain would mine eyes my Saviour see;
I wait a visit, Lord, from thee.

2. My heart grows warm with holy fire,
And kindles with a pure desire;
Come, my dear Jesus! from above,
And feed my soul with heavenly love.

3. Blest Jesus, what delicious fare!
How sweet thine entertainments are?
Never did angels taste, above,
Redeeming grace and dying love.

The trees of life immortal stand,
In flourishing rows, at thy right hand,
And in sweet murmurs, by their side,
Rivers of bliss perpetual glide.

Haste then, but with a smiling face,
And spread the table of thy grace;
Bring down a taste of fruit divine,
And cheer my heart with sacred wine.

Hail, great Immanuel, all divine,
In thee thy Father’s glories shine;
Thou brightest, sweetest, fairest One,
That eyes have seen or angels known.

The above hymn is Hymn 15 in Book Two of Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707). Watts also has a “Part the second” with six more stanzas on the topic. It is Hymn 16.

7. Lord, what a heaven of saving grace,
Shines through the beauties of thy face,
And lights our passions to a flame!
Lord, how we love thy charming Name!

8. When I can say, my God is mine,
When I can feel thy glories shine,
I tread the world beneath my feet,
And all that earth calls good or great.

9. While such a scene of sacred joys
Our raptured eyes and souls imploys,
Here we could sit, and gaze away
A long, an everlasting day.

10. Well, we shall quickly pass the night
To the fair coasts of perfect light;
Then shall our joyful senses rove
O’er the dear object of our love.

11. There shall we drink full draughts of bliss,
And pluck new life from heavenly trees:
Yet now, and then, dear Lord, bestow
A drop of heaven on worms below.

12. Send comforts down from thy right hand,
While we pass through this barren land,
And in thy temple let us see
A glimpse of love, a glimpse of thee.

Missions and Anti-Missions

Some people will not allow themselves to believe there is a distinction between being for preaching the gospel and starting churches (missions) and being against mission boards and mission societies. This Southern Baptist pastor studied Daniel Parker and recognized the difference. He concluded:

“When Daniel Parker died on December 3, 1844, after ten years in Texas, he had successfully demonstrated that his opposition was directed not against missions but against the mission society.” 

“Daniel Parker: Politician, Baptist, and Anti-Mission Missionary,” Max Lee (Pastor, First BC, Winnsboro, LA). The Journal of Texas Baptist History, Volume VI, 1986, William L. Pitts, Editor. Texas Baptist Historical Society, p. 8