Featured Hymn: "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross"

“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross:” by Isaac Watts

Bulletin Blurb

The Lutheran Hymnal Handbook includes this little narrative about this hymn: “With regard to the practical application of the final stanza, Father Ignatius of St. Edmund’s Church in London is reported to have blurted to his congregation: ‘Well, I’m surprised to hear you sing that. Do you know that altogether you put only fifteen shillings in the collection bag this morning?’”.

While Watts might not have been talking explicitly about money in the last line of his text, there is the expectation that we dedicate ourselves entirely to God, for God demands not just a piece of who we are, but “our soul, our life, our all.” This can be an incredibly difficult line to sing with any sense of honesty. Devotional author Jerry Jenkins writes in his book Hymns for Personal Devotions, “Perhaps it’s the distance between where Watts encourages me to be and where I truly am that makes this hymn so hard to sing. It’s a lofty and worthy spiritual goal to say that ‘Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all,’ but how short I fall!” (Jenkins, 44). And so as we sing this hymn of love and awe, we must sing it with a prayer in our hearts, asking God to enable us each day to live our life wholly for him.

Text

Watts’ original text, published in 1707, consisted of five verses. He later took out his original fourth verse, which read,

His dying crimson, like a robe,

Spreads o’er his body on the tree;

Then am I dead to all the globe,

And all the globe is dead to me.

Greg Scheer speculates that perhaps Watts eliminated this verse to focus our attention on our own response to Christ’s crucifixion rather than the actual event itself. This would make sense since Watts wrote the text for a collection of hymns for the Lord’s Supper, an act in which we remember and respond with gratitude to Christ’s sacrifice for us.

Apart from this verse being omitted, not much else has changed in this text, and for good reason: the Psalter Hymnal Handbook writes that “Watts’ profound and awe-inspiring words provide an excellent example of how a hymn text by a fine writer can pack a great amount of systematic theology into a few memorable lines.” The only slight differences you can find between texts are changes of a few words, such as “present/tribute/offering” in the fourth verse.

When/Why/How

Originally written for The Lord’s Supper, this hymn can be used at this point in a service throughout the year. Our remembrance of Christ’s death and resurrection through Watts’ text also makes this a much-loved and often-used hymn for Lent, especially Holy Week. On Good Friday, consider singing it at the very end of a Tenebrae or Good Friday service as a reflection on the rest of the service and the events of Holy Week.

View this hymn at Hymnary.org.