The private slanderer shall be In public justice doomed by me. From haughty looks I’ll turn aside, And mortify the heart of pride. But honesty, called from her cell In splendour at my court shall dwell. Who virtue’s practice make their care, Shall have the first preferments there. No politics shall recommend His country’s foe to be my friend: None e’er shall to my favour rise By flattering or malicious lies. All those who wicked courses take, An early sacrifice I’ll make; Cut off, destroy, till none remain God’s holy city to profane. With the publication of the New Version a new era began. It was to be the last ‘authorized’ metrical version. Hymns of the modern type were beginning to be known, and soon there would be hymns in abundance.[92] IV Eighteenth-century Hymns I.—The School of Watts The greater sacred poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries spoke, for the most part, to themselves and to God; their hymns are of the study and the oratory. But with the eighteenth century a new era began. Its chief hymn-writers were ministers of religion, accustomed to offer prayer and praise, not only for themselves, but for the people. Their hymns were for the congregation and the religious society. They were written with the distinct intention of providing for common need; and in the Nonconformist Churches hymns supplied the place of the rejected liturgy, enabling the congregation to unite in praise and prayer. The earlier centuries give us many rich devotional poems, few of which are entirely suited to the public worship of our time. But we now reach, what George Macdonald calls, ‘the zone of hymn-writing,’ and are embarrassed by the plenteousness of the stores available for use in the service of the sanctuary. Moreover, by this time modern English has become fairly established, and there are few archaic expressions to distract the unlearned. Whatever may be said of the metrical Psalters, no one can doubt that we are in an ampler, purer air when we listen to Isaac Watts (1674-1748). Brighter days were dawning for the religious life of England, and especially for the Nonconformists. Yet as a babe Isaac Watts was nursed by his mother as she sat on a stone near the door of the prison where his father was confined for conscience’ sake. But by the time he was a man the sky had cleared, and there is little in his hymns to recall the times of trouble except the version of Ps. lxxv., ‘applied to the glorious revolution by King William or the happy accession of King George to the throne,’ in which these verses occur— Britain was doomed to be a slave; Her frame dissolved, her fears were great, When God a new supporter gave, To hear the pillars of the State. No vain pretence to royal birth, Shall fix a tyrant on the throne; God, the great Sovereign of the earth, Will rise and make His justice known.