These words by Isaac Watts (1674–1748) appear in his Divine Songs for Children, 1715, under the title “Praise for Creation and Providence.” The thoughts are taken from the Creation account in Genesis 1 and the Creation psalm, Psalm 104. Originally there were eight stanzas of four lines each; the first six were changed to three stanzas of eight lines, as appears in SDAH.

VARINA is a woman’s name, but we know of no special reason for its being chosen for this tune. It is one of Root’s best-known tunes, first appearing in The Sabbath Bell, 1856, where it was said to be “From Rink, by G.F.R.” This is Heinrich Rink; the tune appeared under his name in Philip Phillips’ Metrical Tune Book, 1898. This seems to indicate that Root arranged it from an earlier tune by Rink.

George Frederick Root was born August 30, 1820, in Sheffield, Massachusetts, to a family who believed in training their children to habits of industry, or work ethic, and teaching them the strictest morality and religion. As a small boy he did not sing much but made up for it in learning to play every possible instrument. At age 13 he could play 13 instruments! He dreamed of making music his life, but this was not a vocation looked upon with favor by any except his mother. While his father was away on a trip to South America, at age 18 George went to live with and work for a Mr. Johnson, a piano teacher in Boston. For his pay, young George received three dollars a week, board and room, and piano lessons. In a few weeks playing for prayer meetings and teaching some of the beginning pupils. He met Lowell Mason and sang bass in his Bowdoin Street Choir. By 1841 Root was a teacher of music teachers, assisting Mason in his work. Moving to New York in 1844, he taught music at Rutgers Female Institute, Abbott’s School for Young Ladies, Union Theological Seminary, and the New York Institute for the Blind, where Fanny Crosby (who was his age) was one of his pupils. He collaborated with her in producing a cantata, “The Flower Queen,” and set some of her poems to music.

In 1858 he moved to Chicago and devoted himself to writing, publishing, and conducting normals, or summer learning sessions for music teachers, which he, with Mason, originated. With his brother and C. M. Cady, they formed Root and Cady Music Publishers, which very successfully marketed his popular songs about the Civil War, including “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching,” and some 75 collections of hymns, songs, and arrangements. In the destruction caused by the Chicago fire, their firm lost about $250,000! Most of the printing plates were saved, and they sold out to the John Church Company. Root continued with his writing and conventions until his death on August 6, 1895, at his summer home at Bailey Island, Maine.

Root also wrote the music for: SDAH 218, “When He Cometh“; SDAH 366, “O Where Are the Reapers?“; and SDAH 692 QUAM DILECTA, for “The Lord Is In His Holy Temple.”