Creation (William Billings)
Creation is a hymn tune composed by William Billings.History
Billings included Creation in his final collection, The Continental Harmony. The words are by Isaac Watts: the first stanza is from Psalm 139 and the second from hymn 19, book 2, of his Hymns. In 2002, historian of science Edward B. Davis discovered that Watts based the second stanza on a meditation by the famous chemist Robert Boyle. In that text, from Occasional Reflections Upon Several Subjects, Boyle reflected on an illness from which he had recovered, noting the great complexity of the human body and the wonder of how it all stays so well for so many years.Words
