Isaac Watts is known to history as the father of English hymnody. He wrote some 750 hymns, including beloved classics like “Joy to the World” and “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” Today, however, Watts’ work is increasingly forgotten as many churches follow the latest innovations in worship to the neglect of the great hymns of the faith. In The Poetic Wonder of Isaac Watts, Douglas Bond argues that the grandeur, beauty, and joy of Watts’ lyrics, with their rich biblical and theological content, can help the church regain a sense of wonder at the majesty of God, leading to a reform of worship. This book demonstrates how Watts used his poetic gifts in multiple ways for the good of the church in his day. In an age of simplistic and repetitive worship songs, the church must not forget Isaac Watts. By taking his words as our own, Christians today can share in his wonder at Christ and the glories of the world to come, learning how to better praise God.

John Knox, the great Reformer of Scotland, was once a slave in a French galley but rose to stand against powerful monarchs. Yet he was a small man, often ill, and frequently filled with fears and doubts. How did one so weak in body and mind accomplish so much? In The Mighty Weakness of John Knox, Douglas Bond reveals the answer: Knox was strong in the Spirit, for he was submissive to the will of God and cared for the glory of Christ rather than his own. God strengthened him in his submission to do far more than he could have accomplished in his own power. For those who see themselves as too weak, too small, too timid, or simply too ordinary for service in God’s kingdom, Knox’s life offers a powerful message of hope. This book presents the biblical truth that God often delights to work most powerfully through people who are most weak in themselves but most strong in Him.

Fathers & Sons is a two-volume set containing 48 readings. These books allow over a year of close fellowship between father and son, with the goal of leading sons toward Christian manhood. Taking serious issues seriously, yet promoting a joyful life of enjoying the pleasures of God, these books show how, when a young man makes decisions about the direction his life will take, the stakes are high. Strengthens the faith and love of fathers and sons. Promotes Christian leadership and maturity in young men."Full of lively illustrations, wise warnings, and hard-hitting application for everyday life, Bond's latest book addresses all of the strong temptations and difficult trials that young men face today. Ideal for personal study or father-son discussion, Fathers and Sons is an invitation to pursue manly godliness in the adventure of life.—Philip Graham Ryken, Senior Minister, Tenth Presbyterian Church

In an age of simplistic and repetitive choruses, many churches are rediscovering the blessing of theologically rich and biblically informed songs. In The Poetic Wonder of Isaac Watts, Douglas Bond introduces us to "the father of English hymnody." Douglas Bond urges Christians to delight in the grandeur, beauty, and joy of Watts' poetry. We pray that you would regain a sense of God's majesty as we celebrate the God-given poetic wonder of Isaac Watts.

John Knox, the great Reformer of Scotland, is often remembered as something akin to a biblical prophet born out of time-strong and brash, thundering in righteous might. In truth, he was "low in stature, and of a weakly constitution," a small man who was often sickly and afflicted with doubts and fears. In The Mighty Weakness of John Knox, author Douglas Bond shows that Knox did indeed accomplish herculean tasks, but not because he was strong and resolute in himself. Rather, he was greatly used because he was submissive to God; therefore, God strengthened him. That strength was displayed as Knox endured persecution and exile, faced down the wrath of mighty monarchs, and prayed, preached, and wrote with no fear of man, but only a desire to manifest the glory of God and to please Him. For those who see themselves as too weak, too small, too timid, or simply too ordinary for service in God's kingdom, Knox's life offers a powerful message of hope-the biblical truth that God often delights to work most powerfully through people who are most weak in themselves but most strong in Him.

“She’ll blow any minute! All hands, abandon ship!”The American Revolution ignites a fire that rallies patriots to fight! Sandy M’Kethe, along with freeman Salem Poor, find themselves enlisted together in George Washington’s army. An expert marksman with the longbow, Sandy’s skill attracts the attention of the intrepid sea captain John Paul Jones. Sandy and Salem are bound for high-seas adventures. Together, can they navigate the guns of Providence?The Faith & Freedom Trilogy, sequel to the Crown & Covenant Series, chronicles new generations of the M'Kethe family who find freedom in 18th-century America. Adventure is afoot as Old World tyrannies clash with New World freedoms. Douglas Bond weaves together fictional characters with historical figures from Scottish and American history.

Douglas Bond’s second volume, Hold Fast In a Broken World, is a ramped-up call for young men to prepare for stalwart leadership in the family, church, and culture. Hold Fast is a frank discussion of the cultural topics that a young man must biblically master if he is to be the winsome, servant leader of the rising generation. From stem-cell research to abortion, feminism to gay marriage, multiculturalism to death art, Hold Fast will help fathers prepare their sons to live with courage and wisdom in a hostile world, to be strong men who live and die to the glory of God.

“I had but an instant to save myself before he yanked the bayonet from the ground.”Gavin Crookshank has his first taste of battle at sea when the HMS Lion engages in a death struggle with the French allies of Bonnie Prince Charlie. As a pawn in the hands of two opposing armies, he attempts to act with integrity in a chaos of loyalties during the bloody Jacobite Rebellion. Facing the noose of Bonnie Prince Charlie, or the dungeons of King George, which ruler will finally win his loyalty?The Faith & Freedom Trilogy, sequel to the Crown & Covenant Series, chronicles new generations of the M'Kethe family who find freedom in 18th-century America. Adventure is afoot as Old World tyrannies clash with New World freedoms. Douglas Bond weaves together fictional characters with historical figures from Scottish and American history.

"Make one move," he said, cocking the gun, his voice low, "and I'll slay ye with yer own weapon."The M'Kethe clan finds itself in pre-Revolutionary War Connecticut weathering a storm of religious and political upheaval. Ian M'Kethe is forced to make a choice in the face of enormous odds, as tensions mount between the colonists and the French with their Indian allies. Forging an unlikely friendship with Watookoog, an Indian, Ian risks everything and gains something he thought he had lost forever.The Faith & Freedom Trilogy, sequel to the Crown & Covenant Series, chronicles new generations of the M'Kethe family who find freedom in 18th-century America. Adventure is afoot as Old World tyrannies clash with New World freedoms. Douglas Bond weaves together fictional characters with historical figures from Scottish and American history.

Join Neil Perkins, Latin student at Haltwhistle Grammar School in England, as he uncovers a story of usurpation, treachery, and betrayal. After unearthing an ancient Roman manuscript, Neil dedicates himself to studying Latin, and translates this exciting story from the third century . . .Disaffected centurion Rusticus serves Rome at Hadrian's Wall. He is saved from massacre by Calum, a Celt who was deeply changed when he saw Christians martyred in the Roman Colosseum.The Heroes & History series takes you on epic journeys through turbulent times in history. Douglas Bond gives flesh and blood to heroes as they face war, intrigue, betrayal, loss—and triumph.

Two American teens travel in Europe with David McCallum, an English organist known in his parish as Mr. Pipes. During a series of hair-raising adventures through time, Mr. Pipes introduces Annie and Drew to sixteen hymns from the early centuries and to hymnists Ambrose of Milan, Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Patrick, and more.Readers of The Accidental Voyage will come away with a new knowledge and appreciation of hymns from the early centuries. Homeschooling families will especially benefit from this resource.

Brothers Duncan and Angus team up again to stand for the Covenanter’s cause and fight the king’s injustice. Will they be forced to flee to America, leaving behind their beloved homeland? Or will they save the home and land they love?The Crown & Covenant series follows the lives of the M’Kethe family as they endure persecution in 17th–century Scotland. Douglas Bond weaves together fictional characters with historical figures from Scottish Covenanting history.

Angus M'Kethe, a ready archer, guards sheep from scavenging crows. Loyal to his family, Angus must match wits in a life-and death struggle against Highlanders. By faith, Angus turns his beloved game of chess into a tool of victory. But desperate fear grips the Clan with an unexpected murder! Will Covenanters be found guilty? Angus's true test of manhood and marksmanship will come at the Battle of Drumclog!The Crown and Covenant series follows the lives of the M'Kethe family as they endure persecution in 17th–century Scotland, and later flee to colonial America. Douglas Bond weaves together fictional characters with historical figures from Scottish Covenanting history.

Young Duncan M'Kethe finds himself caught in the web of Sir James Turner, the former Covenanter turned military leader of the persecutors. Duncan is torn by his hatred of Turner's dragoons, who have treated his friends cruelly, and his father's instructions to love them. He must be true to Jesus Christ while attempting to rescue his father from enemy hands.The Crown and Covenant series follows the lives of the M'Kethe family as they endure persecution in 17th–century Scotland, and later flee to colonial America. Douglas Bond weaves together fictional characters with historical figures from Scottish Covenanting history.

fifth commandment. Jesus exposed the fraud: "So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: 'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me' " (Matt. 15:6–8).

Only hearts that have been brought near to God in Christ can truly honor mother and father, even parents who have acted dishonorably. Just as "children obey your parents" does not include obeying their sinful commands, so "honor your father" does not include honoring his dishonorable behavior.

Clearly, if Peter can urge first-century believers to honor everyone, including Emperor Nero (1 Peter 2:17), then the command to honor parents isn't made void by having a dishonorable parent, any more than the command to love our neighbor is void when we have a neighbor who lobs beer cans over our fence. God's commands still apply in a broken world of imperfect neighbors and dishonorable parents; they were gifted to us by our gracious heavenly Father for just such a world.

Perfect Obedience Required

Uniquely, the fifth commandment has annexed to it an enduring consequence for obeying it: "that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you" (Ex. 20:12b).

Long life—everlasting life. Unshakably secured by our elder Brother, whose obedience did surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 5:20), who alone is perfect as His heavenly Father is perfect (5:48), who did what no one has ever been able to do: perfectly fulfill all the duties required in God's law. Pick your earthly hero; not one has perfectly honored his parents.

Except Jesus. Honoring His Father's will, Christ prayed, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will but as you will" (26:39). Forsaken on the cross, the Son perfectly obeyed and honored His Father—though it cost Him everything.

"Honor your father and your mother." Jesus did. In Him, we can grow daily in the grace of honoring our earthly parents for the still greater honor of our heavenly Father.

As a biblically informed theologian and preacher, Isaac Watts found his mind and imagination drawn to meditation on the infinity of the God who, by His power and authority, laid out and sustained the heavens and the entire universe. Describing Watts' fascination with the immensity of the sky and heavens, Manning wrote, "In Watts it leads straight to the Calvinist's awareness of the sovereignty of God." Watts winsomely wove this awareness of God's sovereignty in all areas—including salvation—throughout his hymns, as summarized here in a quatrain: The sovereign will of God alone Creates us heirs of grace, Born in the image of His Son, A new, peculiar race

Watts spoke of God's sovereignty when he wrote of his plans to introduce new poetry into the sung worship of the church: "Leave a man, leave a church free to worship and to wonder at the almighty power and grace of God." Commenting on this, Erik Routley wrote that Watts "was [a] Calvinist. The quality which is common to all Watts' work, is this wonder, which is the essence of John Calvin's message."

Hymnologist Albert Bailey reluctantly admitted, "Watts' hymns are rhymed theology, and the theology is derived from John Calvin, who in turn got his basic ideas from Augustine and Paul." Bailey, a theological liberal, despised the Calvinism of Nonconformists, Puritans, and Presbyterians: "This religion is nothing short of dreadful. It outrages our sense of justice, contradicts our reason, makes God a monster, Christ a play-actor in the tragedy of human history, and robs man of his freedom without which a moral life is impossible." Hence, it is no surprise that Bailey was bewildered by lines like these: May not the sovereign Lord on high Dispense his favors as he will; Choose some to life while others die, And yet be just and gracious still?

Bailey's answer was that God could not choose some to salvation and be just and gracious still. Yet he seemed, nevertheless, to have been enamored with Watts as a hymn writer, and went so far as to claim that Watts "admirably" fulfills Milton's description of the finest poetry as "simple, sensual, and passionate." At last, theological skeptic that he was, Bailey was forced to conclude that with Watts, "Even the cold logic of Calvinism catches fire."

For Watts, there was no "cold logic" to Calvinism. Calvinism was merely the theological name that had attached itself to the biblical truths that filled Watts with wonder, love, and gratitude at the immensity of free grace set upon unworthy sinners before the foundation of the world and accomplished and applied by Jesus Christ through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit regenerating the hearts of the unworthy elect. Watts believed Calvinism was worth singing about because it was the theological glue that gave glory to the grace of God in Christ for the salvation of sinners.

During the Great Awakening, Isaac Watts' hymns played a central role. George Whitefield used Watts' hymns in his outdoor preaching throughout Georgia and New England. Likewise, Watts' hymns had a significant impact on African slaves in the American Colonies. Presbyterian preacher Samuel Davies, an itinerant evangelist and pastor in Anglican Virginia, asked wealthy supporters to donate books to enable his efforts to teach slaves to read. They contributed many volumes of Watts' Hymns and Spiritual Songs, which Davies gave to slaves who were members of his congregations. Davies described how his kitchen would be full late into the night with slaves who had gathered there to sing Watts. The simplicity and sensual passion of Watts' poetry transcended racial and ethnic barriers, and the recurring theme of the suffering of the Savior for lost sinners was a message that resonated with the oppression of African slaves. Also, Watts' determination to avoid flowery, multisyllabic language made his hymns accessible to people who were not yet literate, and the simple metrical structure lent itself to the call-and-response singing of African worship. It is not difficult to imagine these lines from Watts being sung in this manner: When I can read my title clear To mansions in the skies, I bid farewell to every fear, And wipe my weeping eyes.

One theory says that the spirituals created by anonymous African slaves over the next 150 years got their name from Watts' title, Hymns and Spiritual Songs.

Watts' hymns are, in fact, for every Christian in every age—perhaps especially for those in times engaged in a perpetual war with permanence, like ours. If it may be said, "All later hymn writers, even those who excel [Watts], are his debtors," it may equally be deduced that those who ignore Watts will never excel him. And such neglect will be to the enduring detriment of both theological substance and genuine heartfelt passion in the worship of God.

With Watts, it is not only the poet who is caught up in the wonder of Christ's pity, grace, and love so far beyond human knowing but also we, through his poetic appeal to our senses, have our imaginations awakened to the deepest and the highest things of God. Watts gives the worshiper words to sing that are worthy of the grand object of sung praise. In our slavishly narcissistic age, a recovery of Watts will help turn us from ourselves to the God who alone redeems sinners and is alone supremely worthy of our praises. Watts is able to do this not only because of the brilliance of his poetry, but because of the way he employs the poetry to adorn the beauty of Christian theology.

Early in his preaching ministry, Isaac Watts wrote out each sermon in manuscript, but he was careful not to confine himself too closely to his prepared text, "amplifying and altering as he found inclination or occasion, and that with the utmost freedom." Johnson describes Watts as he gained maturity as a preacher: "Such was his flow of thoughts, and such his promptitude of language, that in the latter part of his life he did not precompose his cursory sermons, but, having adjusted the heads and sketched out some particulars, trusted for success to his extemporary powers." Perhaps Watts found that by carefully studying the biblical text and by organizing its meaning in poetic verse in a hymn, the meaning of the text became so rooted in his understanding that he no longer needed to rely on a written sermon manuscript.

Watts' physical weakness disadvantaged him in his role as a pastor. So loved was he by his congregation in the pulpit that they longed for pastoral visits in their homes. Watts attempted to both preach and make regular pastoral visits: To stated and public instruction he added familiar visits and personal application, and was careful to improve the opportunities which conversation offered of diffusing and increasing the influence of religion. By his natural temper he was quick of resentment; but by his established and habitual practice he was gentle, modest, and inoffensive. His tenderness appeared in his attention to children, and to the poor.

But his fragile health would not allow him to sustain the frequent visits that he desired to make to the homes of his congregants. Due to the limitations of his health, in July 1703, the now much larger congregation provided Watts with an assistant, Samuel Price, with whom Watts served in friendship and mutual respect for the remainder of his ministry. Watts’ theology became their theology; his doxology became their doxology

These years of preparing sermons required Watts to dig deeply into the meaning of the inspired text. Preaching forced him to copiously cross-reference biblical themes, to compare Scripture with Scripture, to take deeply into his soul the sacred history, figurative language, imaginative comparisons, and doctrinal truths of the Bible. And he had to stand before his congregation, made up of rich and poor, high-born and common, elderly, middle-aged, newly married, and teenage, and even children and lisping toddlers. Few things could have prepared him to awaken the imagination of his hearers better than these years of close, precise biblical study and exposition.

Watts' hymns, not surprisingly, have been called rhymed sermons. Because they were undiluted theology conveyed to the mind and heart through Watts' poetic imagination and gifted wonder, his people—and all who sing Watts' hymns today—were dazzled with the splendor of Christ and the gospel. Through his hymns, his flock apprehended biblical truth with both mind and spirit. Watts' theology became their theology; his doxology became their doxology.

Watts needed ten lines because he chose to write a poem that not only would rhyme but would also be an acrostic on his name, "Isaac Watts," which has ten letters. This was, no doubt, one of those moments that a mother cherishes and hides up in her heart. Imagine Sarah Watts' wonder at her son's gifting, but still more, the gratitude to God any Christian mother would have for so obvious a working of grace in her son's heart.

In an age of simplistic and repetitive choruses, many churches are rediscovering the blessing of theologically rich and biblically informed songs. Douglas Bond introduces us to Isaac Watts, “the father of English hymnody.” Bond urges Christians to delight in the grandeur, beauty, and joy of Watts’ poetry. We pray that you would regain a sense of God’s majesty as we celebrate the God-given poetic wonder of Isaac Watts.

In this session author Douglas Bond explores the life of John Knox, the great Reformer of Scotland, who is often remembered as something akin to a biblical prophet born out of time—strong and brash, thundering in righteous might. In truth, he was “low in stature, and of a weakly constitution,” a small man who was often sickly and afflicted with doubts and fears. For those who see themselves as too weak, too small, too timid, or simply too ordinary for service in God’s kingdom, Knox’s life offers a powerful message of hope—the biblical truth that God often delights to work most powerfully through people who are most weak in themselves but most strong in Him.

Related resource: The Mighty Weakness of John Knox

In an age of simplistic and repetitive choruses, many churches are rediscovering the blessing of theologically rich and biblically informed songs. In The Poetic Wonder if Isaac Watts, the latest addition to our A Long Line of Godly Men Profile series, Douglas Bond introduces us to Isaac Watts, "The Father of English Hymnody." He urges Christians to delight in the grandeur, beauty, and joy of Watts' poetry.

"As the church casts about, trying to find out how we should do church, how we should worship, and particularly how we should sing in our worship, Watts can provide us with a theological and poetic anchor. 'The Father of English Hymnody' gives us the perfect combination that everyone in the church ought to be striving to reach: passion and feeling grounded on solid theological foundations.

Like few others through the ages, Watts gives us both the head and the heart of sung worship; he helps us both think and feel in our singing. For cerebral Christians who want the head but ignore the heart, Watts lays bare the heart of worship. For those who want the heart but ignore the head, Watts winsomely adorns the beauty of doctrinal purity; he reveals the theological foundations of the gospel in rich ways that renew our minds and awaken heartfelt gratitude and love for the Savior.

My hope and prayer is that this study of Watts' life will be known and felt to be intensely relevant to what and how we are to sing in worship today and throughout the ages."

—Douglas Bond

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"Thanks to the prolific and eloquent pen of Douglas Bond, we now have an insightful glimpse into the life, the faith, and the poetic wonder of this remarkable servant of the church: Isaac Watts. This delightful book needs to be put at the top of your must-read list."

—Dr. George Grant Pastor, East Parish Presbyterian Church Franklin, Tennessee

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