ISAAC WATTS IS GIVEN THE NAME “GODFATHER of English Hymnody” for good reason. Though a minister, writer, theologian, and logician of the 18th century, he is credited with penning some 750 hymns before his death. I only recently stumbled upon “My God, Who Makes the Sun to Know,” and was immediately moved with the forthrightness of his cosmological understanding. Did he believe in a spherical Earth or a flat one? I cannot rightly say. But Watts evoking a sun which moves in our place falls in direct line with Biblical doctrine. The Scripture everywhere and consistently advocates the course of the moon and the sun. And like Joshua, Watts accurately addresses God as directly responsible for making “the sun to know his proper hour to rise….“
“My God, who makes the sun to know
His proper hour to rise,
And to give light to all below
Down send him round the skies.
“When, from the chambers of the East,
His morning race begins
He never tires nor stops to rest,
But, round the world he shines.
“God of the morning, at whose voice
The cheerful sun makes haste to rise,
And like a giant doth rejoice
To run his journeys through the skies;
He sends the sun his circuit round
To cheer the fruits and warm the ground.”
