Creation (William Billings)
Encyclopedia
History
Billings included Creation in his final collection, The Continental Harmony (published in 1794). The words are by Isaac WattsIsaac Watts
Isaac Watts was an English hymnwriter, theologian and logician. A prolific and popular hymnwriter, he was recognised as the "Father of English Hymnody", credited with some 750 hymns...
: the first stanza is from Psalm 139
Psalm 139
Psalm 139 is the 139th psalm from the Book of Psalms. It is ascribed to David. It is known for its affirmation of God's omnipresence:New American bible version:O LORD, you have probed me, you know me:...
and the second from hymn 19, book 2, of his Hymns. It has recently been discovered that Watts based the second stanza on a meditation by the famous chemist Robert Boyle, in which Boyle reflected on an illness from which he had recovered, noting the great complexity of the human body and the wonder of how it all stays so well for so many years.
Words
- When I with pleasing wonder stand
- And all my frame survey
- Lord, 'tis thy work, I own thy hand
- Thus built my humble clay
- Our life contains a thousand springs,
- And dies if one be gone.
- Strange that a harp of thousand strings
- Should keep in tune so long.
See also
- Africa (William Billings), hymn tune with music score
- Chester (song)Chester (song)Among the patriotic anthems sung during the American Revolutionary War, only Yankee Doodle was more popular than William Billings's Chester. Billings wrote the first version of the song for his 1770 songbook The New England Psalm Singer, and made improvements for the version in his The Singing...
, an American Revolutionary WarAmerican Revolutionary WarThe American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
anthem