Psalm 90

Our God, our help in ages past

with
BURSTAL
BEXLY (COLCHESTER)
ST. ANNE

I. Text: Origins

Most worshipers who know this venerated hymn by Isaac Watts (1674–1748) probably do not recognize it as a Psalm paraphrase, but it was initially conceived as an interpretation of Psalm 90 and was first printed in Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (1719 | Fig. 1). In its original form, it spanned nine stanzas of four lines, without music, labeled “Psalm XC. 1–5. First Part. Com[mon] Met[re]. Man Frail and God Eternal.”

In the first edition, the end of the eighth stanza had a closed bracket without a corresponding start; in the second edition (1719), the open bracket began at stanza six, meaning those three stanzas (6–8) were considered optional and could be omitted if the hymn was deemed too long.

II. Text: Analysis

This paraphrase covers the first six verses of Psalm 90 (incorrectly labeled 1–5, and not fixed in later editions). In the first stanza, Watts took the first word of the Psalm, “Lord,” a simple word of address, and expanded it in five ways: “Our God,” “our help,” “our hope,” “our shelter,” and “our eternal home.” Poetically, the repetition of the word “our” is called anaphora. In spite of the period at the end of the first stanza, these four lines are an incomplete thought, carrying over into the second stanza, where the first operative verb of the paraphrase is “dwelt,” preceded by four lines of salutation and one line describing where this has happened (“Under the shadow of thy throne”). The second stanza, then, is where the substance of the first verse of Psalm 90 is expressed. The second verse of the psalm is reworded in stanza 3, the third verse translates to stanza 4, and the fourth verse to stanza 5. The flood of the fifth verse is expanded into Watts’s stanzas 6 and 7, and the remainder of the fifth and sixth verses relating to the grass is conveyed in stanza 8. Watts bookended his paraphrase, except the third line of stanza 9 resolved the syntactical problem of stanza 1 by introducing a new verb, “be,” and a new descriptor, “our guard.”

In many of Watts’s paraphrases, as his collection’s title suggests, he injected New Testament theology and christology into the Hebrew texts, but here Watts remained relatively faithful to the original wording; “From everlasting Thou art God” (3.3) is a near-direct quotation from the King James Version, as is “Return, ye sons [children] of men” (4.2). See also “a thousand years” (5.1), “a watch in the night” (5.3), and “carriest them away as with a flood” (6.3). One of the more notable substitutions is at the end, where the biblical “grass” has become “flow’ry fields.”

In 1964, J.B. Priestley, taking the flood analogy a bit beyond its limits, offered a curious criticism:

Our favourite images of Time are of course all these tides, floods, rivers, streams—anything, it appears, that suggests moving water. . . . And perhaps the most familiar of all, from Isaac Watts’s famous hymn: “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away.” This seems a fine image until we begin to think about it (though to be fair to Watts, he probably never intended us to think about it). These sons that are being borne away—where are they going? Obviously, they are being floated into the past. Some of them were around last year, now they have gone. This seems all right until we realize that, if this stream is bearing all its sons away, it must be flowing from the future into the past. And if so, tomorrow’s rough water might drown somebody yesterday. And if we feel that this will not do, and we reverse the movement of the stream, making it roll from the past into the future, then nobody would have been borne away. . . .

Moving water has been our favourite image of Time probably because it does suggest the stealthy but irresistible passing of the days, months, and years. Intellectually, it is not a satisfying image because oceans and tides have shores, floods and rivers and streams have banks, so that we cannot help wondering what these shores and banks are, what it is that stands still while Time keeps flowing.[1]

The solution to the latter part is easy—the constant variable being God himself, who is “the same yesterday, and today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8). This was clear to J.R. Watson in his response to Priestley:

Imagine yourself to be for a moment like God, outside time, standing on the bank of the river. Day after day, year after year, century after century, the busy tribes of flesh and blood drift pass, busy with their own concerns. Each generation is followed by the next: they are described in the metonymic language of “years” because each generation represents a period of time; as each period of time, each generation, passes away down the stream it disappears from view, because the “following years” now occupy the foreground. The moving river, with its travelling generations sailing down it out of sight, is a wonderful contrast in this hymn to the magnificent permanence of God, “our help in ages past” and “our hope for years to come.” . . . It is God who stands still, as the hills stand still while the river flows.[2]

The opening lines, “Our God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,” make the paraphrase suitable for New Year services and other services marking the passage of time. The editors of the Companion to Church Hymnal (2005) noted its usage in the United Kingdom:

This is a hymn that is regularly treated with the same kind of respect as a national anthem, for it is often associated with special state occasions and is particularly identified with Remembrance Day observances. It is undoubtedly one of the finest, if not the finest, of the psalm paraphrases of Isaac Watts.[3]

Erik Routley saw in it not just a hymn of annual commemoration but one of “great solemnity,” and he asserted a connection between this paraphrase and the rule of Queen Anne (1702–1714):

It is usually thought that it was written in early 1714, just before the death of Queen Anne, and the sorry fact is that had not Queen Anne died unexpectedly in early March of that year the Schism Act would have renewed the dispossession of the nonconformists and brought back all the bitterness which they thought they had left behind twenty-five years before. This is no doubt the origin of that curiously sombre quality in the hymn which has caused it always to be regarded by Englishmen as the indispensable hymn for the day of decision or the day of distress. Its last line but one sounds this note, and nobody who ever heard that last verse sung by itself, in a low key, by the B.B.C. singers at a short service broadcast in the early morning of September 3, 1939, will forget the penetrating impact of the hope and the sorrow which were there expressed.[4]

Hymnologist John Julian praised the overall quality of Watts’s text, writing, “Of Watts’s original, it would be difficult to write too highly. It is undoubtedly one of his finest compositions, and his best paraphrase.”[5]

III. Text: Alteration by Wesley, with Musical Settings

This psalm-hymn by Watts is known to many worshipers via an alteration made by John Wesley (1703–1791), “O God, our help in ages past,” first given in A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1738). Aside from changing the first word, Wesley changed the tense of 2.2 (“Still may we dwell secure”), omitted stanza 4, changed 6.2 (“With all their cares and tears”), omitted stanza 8, and altered 9.3 (“Be thou our guard while life shall last”). In the 1741 edition, “cares and tears” became “cares and fears,” and the final line was changed from “eternal” to “perpetual.”[6]

The version from 1741 was repeated in Select Hymns with Tunes Annext (1761). In the tune book, the assigned tune was BURSTAL, a melody of unknown authorship first printed in this collection (Fig. 2). The underlaid text, “Thee we adore, eternal name,” also by Isaac Watts and also about the frailty of humanity and the passage of time, is from Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707).

Wesley’s alteration of Watts appeared again in A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1780), where it was labeled “Describing death,” and used the same text as had been given in 1741 and 1761. In the 5th through 7th editions (1786–1791), which contained tune recommendations, Wesley assigned this text to BEXLY, a tune by William Tans’ur (1699–1783). In the corresponding Wesleyan tune book, Sacred Harmony (1780), this tune was underlaid with “Lord, all I am is known to thee,” another Watts text, altered from his paraphrase of Psalm 139, “In all my vast concerns with thee.”

Tans’ur’s tune is more commonly known as COLCHESTER, from A Compleat Melody: or, The Harmony of Sion (1735 | 4th ed. at Fig. 4), underlaid with a paraphrase of Psalm 150 by Thomas Norton from The Whole Booke of Psalmes (1562).

IV. Text: Assessment of Wesley

Wesley’s revision of Watts has been very widely adopted, sometimes if only via the first line. His reduction to seven stanzas is typically reduced further to six (1–3, 5, 7, 9). Regarding this particular six-stanza form, John Julian remarked, “In the commonly accepted form of six stanzas it is seen to the fullest advantage, the omitted portions being unequal to the rest, and impede the otherwise grandly sustained flow of thought.”[7] And yet, the omission of the original stanzas 4 and 6 omit two verses from the psalm (3, 6). What’s more, the omission of stanza 4 has caused a common misinterpretation of how time “bears all its sons away” in stanza 5. Multiple commentaries erroneously interpret “sons” to mean units of time (days, months, years), but in the preceding stanza, Watts had clearly indicated it is the “busy tribes of flesh and blood” who are “carried downwards by thy flood and lost in following years.”

Some scholars are not keen on Wesley’s opening change from “Our” to “O,” which disrupts the anaphora. Bernard Massey summarized the debate and leaned toward the change, because it alerts the worshiper to the mode of address:

We can only guess what motivated Wesley’s blue pencil here. Certainly something is lost by the change to the more impersonal form. A number of writers have pointed out that, in the original, “our” occurs five times in the first four lines and that may be too much of a good thing. A reduction of only 20%, however, is hardly worth bothering about, even though the first two “ours” are separated by only one syllable. More importantly, the opening of the hymn is vocative, but an initial “our” fails to indicate this. In fact, one has to wait until the fifth line of the hymn, where the word “thy” appears, before knowing whether the words are addressed to God or are simply a statement about him. By using the vocative “O” Wesley made matters clear at the outset. Still, whether our friend the average worshipper is misled by the original version and whether the gains achieved by the alteration outweigh the losses are matters that will no doubt continue to be debated.[8]

Regarding what Massey called “the more impersonal form” of “O,” J.R. Watson explained how a sense of community had been built into Watts’s original “Our”:

This was the natural language for Watts, writing in the Puritan and Dissenting tradition, which saw God as the covenant God of a chosen people, so that He became “our God,” and the righteous became his “saints,” who in this hymn dwell secure under the shadow of His throne.[9]

V. ST. ANNE

The tune now almost universally associated with Watts’s text is ST. ANNE, which was first printed in A Supplement to the New Version of Psalms, 6th ed. (London: 1708 | Fig. 5), unattributed, in two parts (melody and bass). There it was set with a paraphrase of Psalm 42, “As pants the hart for cooling streams,” from Tate & Brady’s New Version of the Psalms (1696/8).

The authorship of this tune is credited to this William Croft (1678–1727) on the strength of several factors, as explained by English church music scholar Nicholas Temperley:

There is no attribution in the earliest source. . . . Croft was, however, almost certainly organist of St. Anne’s Church, Soho, from 1700 to 1711, so that name is circumstantial evidence of his authorship. Moreover, the tune is attributed to Croft by two contemporary editors who certainly knew him well, Philip Hart (in Melodies Proper to be Sung to Any of the Versions of Ye Psalms of David, Figur’d for the Organ [London, 1716]) and John Church (in An Introduction to Psalmody [London, 1723]), and also by his pupil John Barker, who possessed some of Croft’s hymn tune settings in manuscript and published them in A Select Number of the Best Psalm Tunes, Extant (Birmingham, ca. 1750).[10]

In the latter collection (Fig. 6), Barker published a four-part setting credited to Croft; this has not been adopted into other collections.

ST. ANNE is sometimes printed in hymnals using the arrangement by William Henry Havergal (1793–1870), from Old Church Psalmody (1847 | Fig. 7). Havergal set it to a paraphrase of Psalm 9 by Thomas Sternhold from Al Such Psalmes of Dauid (1549). Havergal’s bass line has much in common with Theophania Cecil’s Psalm and Hymn Tunes (1814 | Fig. 9).

In his preface, Havergal noted the similarity between this tune and an earlier tune by Henry Lawes (1596–1662), PSALM 9, in A Paraphrase upon the Psalmes of David (London: John Legatt, 1638) by George Sandys:

This is a deservedly admired tune, and quite old in style. . . . The identity of the melody of the first strain with the tune of Henry Lawes is only one of many instances in which composers, without breach of honesty, write the same passages. The modulation at the close of the third strain is often most unjustifiably changed for that of the dominant. Editors, too, fear to follow the worthy Doctor, as he followed his predecessors, in commencing the first note of the fourth strain on the tonal full chord, because of consecutive fifths. Such fifths no old harmonist ever declined.[11]

Hymnologist Erik Routley was also keen to connect Croft’s tune with Lawes’s (Fig. 8), writing, “But when we consider ST. ANNE’S opening phrase, its finish in the high tonic, and the ‘saw-edge’ movement of its third line, the temptation to say that it was inspired by Lawes need be resisted no longer.”[12] Nicholas Temperley cautioned, “In reality, the composer’s achievement lay in making a powerful new synthesis of preexisting elements. ST. ANNE, with its swinging ‘sawtooth’ melodic line, is clearly modeled on some of the classic tunes of a century earlier, such as YORK, LONDON NEW, and ST. DAVID.”[13] Similarly, Paul Westermeyer argued, “Croft in ST. ANNE did what Luther did—took the musical materials that lay at hand and harnessed them well for congregational participation.”[14]

If ST. ANNE borrowed from previous sources, it also inspired others: the opening melodic line can be found in G.F. Handel’s anthem “O praise the Lord with one consent,” HG xxxv 98 (1717–1718) and in J.S. Bach’s organ fugue in E-flat, BWV 552 (1739), which is sometimes called “St. Anne’s fugue.” ST. ANNE was enormously popular, having been published in no less than 522 tune books through 1820.

Watts’s text was first paired with Croft’s tune in Theophania Cecil’s Psalm and Hymn Tunes, used at St Johns Chapel, Bedford Row (London: For the author, 1814 | Fig. 9). According to Temperley, “The compiler was the daughter of the Rev. Richard Cecil, and was organist of St. John’s Chapel, where he was minister.”[15]

In spite of the early connection, this pairing was uncommon until it appeared in the first edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern (London: Novello, 1861 | Fig. 10), harmonized by William Henry Monk. Thereafter, this pairing has become nearly inseparable. J.R. Watson remarked, “It has proved to be an inspired setting, allowing the words to reverberate, and carrying the ideas with a steady pace and with great dignity.”[16]

One other harmonization worth noting, still found in some hymnals, is the one by Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) from the Supplemental Hymn and Tune Book, 3rd ed. (1869 | Fig. 11) edited by Robert Brown-Borthwick. In that collection, it had been paired with “The Son of God goes forth to war” by Reginald Heber, and the arrangement spanned eight stanzas. Sullivan’s four-part harmonization, as in stanzas 2, 4, and 7, which is similar to Havergal’s and Monk’s, was reprinted in The English Hymnal (1906 | Fig. 12) without attribution, and from there this arrangement has been adopted into other collections.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
21 December 2020

Footnotes:

1. J.B. Priestley, Man and Time (London: W.H. Allen, 1964), quoted in “An ever-rolling stream?” HSGBI Bulletin, vol. 11, no 6 (April 1986), p. 139.

2. Quoted in Bernard S. Massey, “Our God, our help,” HSGBI Bulletin, vol. 11, no. 7 (July 1986), p. 154.

3. Edward Darling & Donald Davison, “O God, our help in ages past,” Companion to Church Hymnal (2005), p. 708.

4. Erik Routley, “Our God, our help in ages past,” Hymns and the Faith (1955), p. 34.

5. John Julian, “Our God, our help in ages past,” A Dictionary of Hymnology (London: J. Murray, 1892), p. 875: HathiTrust

6. For this version, see the edition by Randy L. Maddox, A Collection of Psalms and Hymns, John Wesley’s Poetry, Hymn, and Verse (Duke Divinity School, rev. 12 Mar. 2018), pp. 47–48: PDF

7. John Julian, “Our God, our help in ages past,” A Dictionary of Hymnology (London: J. Murray, 1892), p. 875: HathiTrust

8. Bernard S. Massey, “Our God, our help,” HSGBI Bulletin, vol. 11, no. 7 (July 1986), p. 154.

9. J.R. Watson, “O God, our help in ages past,” An Annotated Anthology of Hymns (2002), p. 144.

10. Nicholas Temperley, “O God, our help in ages past,” The Hymnal 1982 Companion, vol. 3B (1994), pp. 1255–1256.

11. William Henry Havergal, Old Church Psalmody, 3rd ed. (London, J. Shepherd, 1853), pp. 8–9.

12. Erik Routley, The Music of Christian Hymns (Chicago: GIA, 1981), p. 53.

13. Nicholas Temperley, “O God, our help in ages past,” The Hymnal 1982 Companion, vol. 3B (1994), p. 1256.

14. Paul Westermeyer, “ST. ANNE,” Let the People Sing: Hymn Tunes in Perspective (2005), p. 176.

15. Nicholas Temperley, Hymn Tune Index, source CeciTPHT.

16. J.R. Watson, “O God, our help in ages past,” An Annotated Anthology of Hymns (2002), p. 145.

Related Resources:

John Julian, “Our God, our help in ages past,” A Dictionary of Hymnology (London: J. Murray, 1892), p. 875: HathiTrust

Erik Routley, “Our God, our help in ages past,” Hymns and the Faith (London: J. Murray, 1955), pp. 33–37.

[Bernard S. Massey,] “An ever-rolling stream?” HSGBI Bulletin, vol. 11, no 6 (April 1986), p. 139.

Bernard S. Massey, “Our God, our help,” HSGBI Bulletin, vol. 11, no. 7 (July 1986), pp. 153–156.

Nicholas Temperley, “O God, our help in ages past,” The Hymnal 1982 Companion, vol. 3B (NY: Church Hymnal Corp., 1994), pp. 1254–1258.

J.R. Watson, The English Hymn (Oxford: University Press, 1997), pp. 157–159.

J.R. Watson, “O God, our help in ages past,” An Annotated Anthology of Hymns (Oxford: University Press, 2002), pp. 143–145.

Paul Westermeyer, “ST. ANNE,” Let the People Sing: Hymn Tunes in Perspective (Chicago: GIA, 2005), pp. 172–176.

Edward Darling & Donald Davison, “O God, our help in ages past,” Companion to Church Hymnal (Dublin: Columba, 2005), pp. 708–710.

Vijay Seshadri, “Immanance: O God, our help in ages past,” Stars Shall Bend Their Voices: Poets’ Favorite Hymns & Spiritual Songs, ed. Jeffrey L. Johnson (Asheville, NC: Orison Books, 2018), pp. 141–144.

Robert E. Smith & Joseph Herl, “O God, our help in ages past,” Lutheran Service Book Companion to the Hymns, vol. 1 (St. Louis: Concordia, 2019), pp. 1036–1038.

David W. Music, “Our God, our help in ages past,” Repeat the Sounding Joy: Reflections on Hymns by Isaac Watts (Macon, GA: Mercer, 2020), pp. 149–158: Amazon

Alan Gaunt, “O God, our help in ages past,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology:
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/o/o-god,-our-help-in-ages-past

Hymn Tune Index:
https://hymntune.library.uiuc.edu/default.asp