Welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History.

On this episode, we are looking at Isaac Watts, the founder of English hymnody in five sayings.

Watts lived from 1674 to 1748, and he wrote a lot.

He wrote 750 hymns, and estimating at 125 words per hymn, well, that's 93,750 words.

He also recast the 150 Psalms, and they're a little bit longer, so let's average those out at 250.

Well, that's another 37,500 words.

He wrote a number of theological and philosophical articles.

The estimate there is somewhere around 400,000 words, and then we turn to his poetry, not hymns, and he racks up another 75,000 words.

Well, here's Watts with his 600,000 words and out of all of that, let's choose five sayings.

The first one comes from his Christmas hymn, and I'm sort of sad that it's a Christmas hymn because I wish we would sing this

hymn all year long. It's joy to the world. The Lord is come. Any one of these lines qualifies as a key saying,

but I'm going to hone in on a line from the third stanza, far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found.

Christ came to make his blessings known, and how far and deep and why do those blessings go?

Well, they cancel out the curse. They go as far as the curse is found.

For a second saying of Isaac Watts, let's go to another very popular hymn of his When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.

Again, any of the stanzas provide a saying worthy of mention, but I'm going with one from the second

stanza, of all the vain things that charm me most. So as we look to the cross of Christ,

we realize just how vain and finite and unsatisfying these things are that can charm us.

Well, for our third saying, I'm going to a hymn that might not be as well known,

my dear Redeemer and my Lord.

He begins the hymn by saying that our duty can be found in God's Word.

But in Christ's life, the law appears drawn out in living characters.

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