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. They are not the singular rapture over the worshipper’s own state of feeling, they are not even rapture so much on account of what is seen; they are praise and honour to the objects themselves, and they have indeed to be perverted before they can express any other sentiments than those they originally utter. Few writers more affectingly set forth _the death of Christ_: He dies! the Friend of sinners dies! Lo! Salem’s daughters weep around; A solemn darkness veils the skies, A sudden trembling shakes the ground. Break off your tears, ye saints, and tell How high our great Deliverer reigns; Sing how He spoiled the hosts of hell, And led the monster Death in chains. Say, “Live for ever, wondrous King! Born to redeem and strong to save;” Then ask the monster, “Where’s thy sting?” And “Where’s thy victory, boasting grave?” The hymn, indeed, contains some weak lines, but the first and the three last verses have even great dramatic vigour and strength. But hymns are not always to shine with splendid lights, _they are to soothe and comfort_; hence such words as— Come hither, all ye weary souls. We remember a venerable minister eighty-eight years of age, who filled a conspicuous place in the Church of his day; while he was dying his daughter said to him: Jesus can make a dying bed As soft as downy pillows are, While on His breast I lean _my_ head, And breathe my life out sweetly there. The old man listened as well as he could to the verse, then turned his head on the pillow, repeated the words “_my_ head,” and so died. Perhaps some critic would remark that the versification is slightly inaccordant or defective, but its tenderness has propitiated many a dying pang.