Isaac Watts (1674–1748) broke away from the metrical versions of the psalms. These adhered very strictly to the wording of the Old Testament and, consequently, in many cases produced awkward, clumsy lines. Watts made free paraphrases, skillfully using the main thought of the psalm and omitting references that were not germane in Christian times. This hymn is his paraphrase of Psalm 100; it could be compared profitably with William Kethe’s metrical version of the same psalm (see SDAH 16).

John Wesley, who objected to other writers tinkering with his hymns and those of his brother Charles, wisely omitted the initial patriotic stanza and changed the first two lines of the second stanza (first in SDAH) from:

Nations attend before His throne,
With solemn fear, with sacred joy.

DUKE STREET is listed as anonymous in Henry Boyd’s Select Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes, 1793, where it bears the name ADDISON’S 19TH PSALM. But in William Dixon’s Euphonia, c. 1805, it is called DUKE STREETand credited to John Hatton. The name is a street where the composer’s home was located.

Little is known about John Hatton. Born about 1710 at Warrington, Lancashire, he lived at St. Helen’s in the township of Windle, England, on the street after which he named the tune. Some think he was killed in a stagecoach accident; the Presbyterian Church of St. Helen’s records the preaching of his funeral sermon on December 13, 1793. If he wrote other music, it has not survived, but this one, which marches vigorously up and down the scale, is in nearly every hymnal and often is set to several texts. SDAH uses it again for No. 227, “Jesus Shall Reign,” in which Melvin West (see Biographies) has arranged it for unison voices.