"O God our help in ages" past Hymn History

Good afternoon to our Readers around the world.

I am posting another hymn history, this one about Isaac Watt's well known hymn "O God Our Help in Ages Past." I hope that this will be a blessing to you and that you can sing along with this hymn as the lyrics are also included below. In addition, I included a link to a good performance of this beautiful hymn.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748) penned a hymn for days like this. “O GOD, OUR HELP IN AGES PAST,” a paraphrase of Psalm 90, was written in 1714 when England was in crisis, faced with another wave of religious intolerance. Watts knew about intolerance. He was nursed on the steps of the Southampton jail where his father, a Protestant with “Nonconformist sympathies,” was imprisoned for worshipping with his family outside the state-sanctioned Church of England. 

When he wasn’t fighting for religious freedom, Isaac Watts, Sr. ran a boarding school. There, he taught his frail and sickly son to love languages. Young Isaac was a good student, not one to waste time. By age four he had mastered Latin; by eight he knew Greek; then he tackled French and Hebrew. 

At the time, Protestants in England were restricted to singing metrical psalms, “lined out” by a leader. One day, Isaac Jr. complained that psalm-singing was boring, to which his father famously replied, “Then give us something better, young man!” 

That’s how young Watts began penning religious verse. He would become known as “The Father of English Hymnody” or, as hymnologist Erik Routley called him, its liberator.

When it came time for him to go to university, Watts chose a Nonconformist academy in London because Oxford and Cambridge were for Anglicans only. 

In 1702, he became the pastor of the prestigious Mark Lane Independent Chapel. By then, England was warily experimenting with religious freedom, although it was still illegal to deny the Trinity.

In 1712, Watts was a pastor in London. Exhausted by ongoing poor health, he accepted an invitation to spend a week convalescing in the country home of a well-heeled parishioner. He packed his bags for a seven-day visit, but stayed thirty-six years!  

At the country home of his generous parishioner, Watts wrote a number of books on topics ranging from philosophy to astronomy and completed over 600 hymn texts. Experimenting, he changed the notion of what is appropriate for Christians to sing in worship, believing that people of faith needed “hymns of human composure” to help express our beliefs. He also wanted to bring the spirit of Christianity into the Old Testament Psalms sung in worship.

In 1714, Queen Anne, a Protestant, became deathly ill. England was thrown into chaos. The era of conditional religious tolerance was suddenly threatened. To make matters worse, Parliament hurriedly passed the Schism Act designed to suppress dissent once again. 

Watts promptly sat down to write a hymn of comfort for England’s panicked citizens, especially his worried fellow Dissenters. Paraphrasing Psalm 90, he reminded them that God takes the long view of Time, while humans are caught up in the trials and tribulations of our current crises.

Oh God, our help in ages past
Our hope for years to come
Our shelter from the stormy blast
And our eternal home

Under the shadow of thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure
Sufficient is thine arm alone
And our defense is sure

Before the hills in order stood
Or earth received her frame
From everlasting thou' art God
To endless years the same

A thousand ages in thy sight
Are like an evening gone
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun

Time, like an ever-rolling stream
Bears all its sons away
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day

Oh God, our help in ages past
Our hope for years to come
Be thou' our guide while troubles last
And our eternal home.