Religion: Sanguine Hymnology (Cont'd)

To the blest fountain of thy blood, Incarnate God, I fly:

Here let me wash my spotted soul From crimes of deepest dye.

—Isaac Watts.

Hymn-Writer Watts, a gentle, humorless metaphor-mixer, wrote many & many a hymn. Probably he never pictured to himself a Christian, with spotted soul under his arm, flying to the fountain as to a gory laundry. But modern Methodists, sincere as any one in accepting the allegory of the Blood Atonement, raise their eyebrows at the language in which it was couched. Currently a number of hymns by Watts and the Wesleys are slated for omission from a revised hymnal...