A greater than any of the above was Philip Doddridge (1702-1751), who was a close friend of Isaac Watts, although nearly thirty years younger. He wrote three hundred and seventy-five hymns, most of them as pendants to sermons, recapitulating and enforcing the points of his discourse. They were not collected and published until four years after his death. The fine character and high ability displayed by Doddridge endeared him to many of the most important people of his day. The devoutness, literary grace, and adaptation to actual use of his lyrics were immediately recognized. Their distinctly homiletical character, combined with deep religious feeling and tenderness, and their varied topics, greatly appealed to ministers, and they were recognized as second only to Watts. The Church owes some of its most useful hymns to him: “Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve,” “Grace; ’tis a charming sound,” “How gentle God’s commands,” “O happy day, that fixed my choice,” “My gracious Lord, I own thy right,” are among the many found in all our hymnals. His relative standard may be inferred from the use made of leading hymn writers by Dr. Benson in his _Revised Presbyterian Hymnal_: Watts 49, Charles Wesley 24, Doddridge 13. _Chapter XVI_ THE WESLEYS AND THEIR ERA I. THE INFLUENCE OF WATTS ON THE WESLEYS The line of hymnic succession between Watts and the Wesleys was direct and not through Doddridge, for the latter’s hymns did not appear until 1754. One-half of John Wesley’s _American Collection_, the first hymnbook published in America, issued in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1737, after two years’ work in the new Colony of Georgia, consisted of Watts’ hymns. It goes without saying that Watts’ hymnbooks, with others like Tate and Brady’s _New Version_, George Herbert’s poems, the hymns of John Austin, of Henry More, and of Norris of Bemerton, were so well known, and so appreciated, that copies of them were included among the books carried to America. In early manhood they met the already elderly Watts, and as they walked they sang together. Indeed, with Dr. Benson we may “infer that Watts’ _Psalms and Hymns_, in connection with Tate and Brady’s _New Version_, furnished the materials for the singing of the ‘Holy Club.’” It is evident from the list of hymnbooks, and from the list of Wesley’s selections for his _American Collection_, that Watts was not the only influence that gave the impulse and fashioned the Wesleyan ideals of the public song service. It is noteworthy that Barton and Mason were not included. The High-Church Anglican Wesleys were not so prejudiced against Watts’ Nonconformist hymns as to exclude them. II. THE HOME OF THE WESLEYS