Isaac Watts (1674–1748) wrote this paraphrase of Psalm 90:1–5 while England waited for Queen Anne to die, with no surviving heir and a Catholic Stuart claimant across the water, and he headed it “Man Frail and God Eternal” to remind a nervous Protestant minority that thrones change hands while God does not. The text is cast in collect form, an extended prayer that expands the psalmist’s picture of God as shelter in this life and the next, which makes it a fitting answer to a day whose own Collect asks God to stir us up. Watts began it “Our God, our help in ages past.” John Wesley changed the opening word to “O” in 1738, most hymnals followed, and Missouri Synod hymnals kept Watts’s original for centuries, yielding only with the Lutheran Service Book. --- *From the The Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity primer:* Isaac Watts (1674–1748) wrote this hymn while England waited for a queen to die. Anne was gravely ill, none of her children had survived to adulthood, and a struggle for the throne looked certain. Watts, a dissenting Protestant, had reason to dread the accession of Anne’s half-brother James, the Catholic Stuart claimant, whose father had promoted Catholicism in England until the Glorious Revolution removed him in 1688. Into that anxiety Watts wrote a paraphrase of Psalm 90:1– 5 and headed it “Man Frail and God Eternal,” reminding a nervous Protestant minority that thrones change hands while God remains their home. He began it “Our God, our help in ages past.” John Wesley altered the opening word to “O” in 1738 and cut three stanzas, and though most hymnals followed Wesley, Missouri Synod hymnals stubbornly kept Watts’s “Our God” for centuries, yielding only with the Lutheran Service Book. Among the stanzas Wesley discarded was this: “The busy Tribes of Flesh and Blood / With all their Lives and Cares / Are carried downwards by thy Flood, / And lost in following Years.” The hymn is appointed for days of national or local tragedy, and Britain sings it on Remembrance Day, 11 November.
Sung at Our Saviour
2025