He walked his solitary room in tears, and (he says) "took up Watts's version of the Psalms, and opened it at the Fifty-first Psalm, and read the first, second, and third parts in long meter with strong affections, and made it all my own language, and thought it was the language of my heart to God." There was more than the experience of a great and simple soul, there was the germ of a future system of theology, in the penitential confession which the young student "made his own language," and in the exquisite lines which, under the figure of a frightened bird, became the utterance of his first tremulous and faltering faith: Lord, should thy judgment grow severe, I am condemned, but thou art clear.
Should sudden vengeance seize my breath, I must pronounce thee just in death; And if my soul were sent to hell, Thy righteous law approves it well.
Yet save a trembling sinner, Lord, Whose hope, still hovering round thy word, Would light on some sweet promise there, Some sure support against despair.
The introduction of the new psalmody was not accomplished all at once, nor without a struggle.

But we gravely mistake if we look upon the controversy that resulted in the adoption of Watts's Psalms as a mere conflict between enlightened good taste and stubborn conservatism.

The action proposed was revolutionary.

It involved the surrender of a long-settled principle of Puritanism.

At the present day the objection to the use of "human composures" in public worship is unintelligible, except to Scotchmen.