Pisgah

Awhile back, I looked at my email inbox and noticed I had 58 unread emails. The number 58 made me think of Pisgah, the tune on page number 58 in The Sacred Harp (all of ’em). The tune appears there with the old standard hymn by Richard Burnham, “Jesus, thou art the sinners friend.” As much as I love and have sung this song in The Sacred Harp, my mind actually associates this tune more with the hymn beginning “When I can read my title clear,” by Isaac Watts. That is the hymn that was attached to the tune in a church song book we used when I was growing up. It has been my go to tune for singing any common meter hymn for which I did not have a tune.

When I was growing up, I was a bit confused by the first line, as to just what it meant. This began to clear up when I discovered the original title of the hymn. These words are titled “The Hopes of Heaven our Support under Trials on Earth,” and first appeared in Isaac Watts’s Hymns and Spiritual Songs in 1707. Just to restate Watts’s title, the Christian’s hope of heaven is what supports us when we go through trials on earth. That is a great comfort.

1. When I can read my title clear
To mansions in the skies,
I’ll bid farewell to every fear,
And wipe my weeping eyes.

2. Should earth against my soul engage,
And fiery darts be hurled,
Then I can smile at Satan’s rage,
And face a frowning world.

3. Let cares like a wild deluge come,
And storms of sorrow fall!
May I but safely reach my home:
My God, my heaven my all.

4. There shall I bathe my weary soul
In seas of heavenly rest,
And not a wave of trouble roll
Across my peaceful breast.

“A clear title is a title without any lien from creditors or other parties and poses no question as to legal ownership. An owner of a car with a clear title is the sole undisputed owner, and no other party can make any legal claim to its ownership. Born again Christians who have had their debt of sin blotted out by Christ’s redemptive work have a clear title indicating that God in Heaven has redeemed his soul and is the sole owner of the child of God.” -- Bob Swisher

I have read that the tune Pisgah was first published in the 1817 2nd edition of The Kentucky Harmony, by Ananias Davisson. I have not seen that book and cannot confirm the accuracy of the statement. However, the 3rd edition of A Supplement to The Kentucky Harmony is online. I can confirm that not only is it in that book but it does indeed appear with the words “When I can read my title clear.” The tune is credited to Lowry. In the 1819 Tennessee Harmony, the publisher, Alexander Johnson, takes credit for a different arrangement of the same melody.

The tune is named for Pisgah, a mountain mentioned in the Bible as being on the east side of the Jordan River. From Pisgah, God showed Moses the Promised Land. See Deuteronomy 34:1ff. Note that in stanza two Isaac Watts’s original has “hellish darts.” Most hymn books have instead “fiery darts,” probably to bring it to match the adjective describing darts in Ephesians 6:16.

Charles S. Nutter and Wilbur F. Tillet in The Hymns and Hymn Writers of the Church: An Annotated Edition of the Methodist Hymnal (p. 231) notes how William Cowper alludes to this hymn by Watts.

Cowper in his poem titled “Truth” compares the lot of the infidel Voltaire with that of a poor and believing cottager who

Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true—
A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew:
And in that charter reads, with sparkling eyes,
Her title to a treasure in the skies.