Not only does common sense confirm Watts’s general principle; his own success, partial though it was, justified the new departure, and from his day to ours the most useful and the most poetic versions of Psalms are those which ‘teach the author to speak like a Christian.’ Yet, if a psalm could be dealt with from the Old Testament standpoint without inappropriateness to Christian worship, Watts preferred to retain the original idea. Thus in all his versions of the 23rd Psalm he makes no reference to the Good Shepherd of the New Testament. His best version—and it is very good—is as suitable for the synagogue as the meeting-house. My Shepherd will supply my need; Jehovah is His Name; In pastures fresh He makes me feed, Beside the living stream. The _Methodist Hymn-book_ omits the last verse, which is given in most other collections— There would I find a settled rest, While others go and come; No more a stranger or a guest, But like a child at home. It is a beautiful paraphrase of ‘Thy house for ever.’ He felt, however, that his experiment was so novel and so likely to provoke adverse criticism, that he continually explained or defended his versions in notes appended to the psalms, which form a sort of running commentary. Watts’s _Psalms_ mark the passage from psalm-singing to hymn-singing. Slowly but surely the distinction disappears from modern hymn-books, and psalm-versions take their place amongst ‘hymns.’ This was not Watts’s design, but it is a part of the success of his enterprise. If to-day we had to make choice of any one metrical version of the Psalter for use in Christian worship, it would be impossible to find anything better than Watts’s. Indeed, if feeble ‘aliters’ (to use Barton’s phrase) and poor verses were omitted, the result would show how near he came to achieving success. It is difficult to overstate the service rendered to the worship of the Christian Church by Dr. Watts. As Lord Selborne says, ‘He was the first to understand the nature of the want,’ and he ‘led the way in providing for it.’ Yet it is easy to quote poor verses, to find lines that are intolerably flat. His rhymes are often either discordant in the extreme or lacking altogether. Sometimes he is too colloquial, as in Well, the Redeemer’s gone To appear before our God. Perhaps no hymn-writer needs editing so much as Watts, and certainly none has been edited more skilfully. Not a few of his hymns owe their place in our hymnals to the judicious way in which they have been ‘improved.’ We cannot dispute Dr. Johnson’s criticism The rhymes are not always sufficiently correspondent.... His lines are commonly smooth and easy, and his thoughts always religiously pure; but who is there that, to so much piety and innocence, does not wish for a greater measure of sprightliness and vigour?[99]