Old Isaac Watts has a poor reputation among religious liberals. He’s old-fashioned. He writes those four-square hymns we love to hate. He’s rooted in the Bible and talks about God as male. Bad hymnodist!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet here’s an Isaac Watts hymn that would be a very nice addition to today’s liberal religious hymnody:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In vain the wealthy mortals toil,
\nAnd heap their shining dust in vain;
\nLook down and scorn the humble poor,
\nAnd boast their lofty hills of gain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their golden cordials cannot ease
\nTheir pained hearts or aching heads,
\nNor fright nor bribe approaching death
\nFrom glitt’ring roofs and downy beds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thence they are huddled to the grave,
\nWhere kings and slaves have equal thrones;
\nTheir bones without distinction lie
\nAmongst the heap of meaner bones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 “The Rich Sinner Dying,” Hymn 1:24 from Hymns and Spiritual Songs by Isaac Watts.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Old Isaac Watts has a poor reputation among religious liberals. He’s old-fashioned. He writes those four-square hymns we love to hate. He’s rooted in the Bible and talks about God as male. Bad hymnodist! Yet here’s an Isaac Watts hymn that would be a very nice addition to today’s liberal religious hymnody: In vain the … Continue reading “In vain”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[104,105],"class_list":["post-600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-miscellany","tag-hymnody","tag-isaac-watts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12915,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions\/12915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}