hasty reader fail to see, in this systematic distinction, a working out, ad unguem, of that famous reply of Burney's dramatic friend to the wondering bishop: "My Lord, you pronounce truth as if you took it for fiction; and I pronounce fiction as if I took it for truth"? Fugue and canon shall be banished from what must have the semblance of truth; they are judiciously retained where " the cold reality" might else become "too real!" The perfect service, like the perfect sermon, "must be clear, correct, and argumentative;" the musician, like the preacher, "must be free from all suspicion of being moved himself, or of intending to produce emotion in his hearers. The theatre, the bar, and the parliament may inflame and agitate their respective auditories; the church must be the only place where the most feverish sensibility is sure of being laid to rest."

Can we wonder if the followers of that very Wesley, who demanded that the devil should not "have all the good tunes," and who, like their teacher, found in religion the great reality, should fail to find in church music a fitting organ for their thoughts and feelings? The matter is, indeed, of such import, that I cannot content myself with the mere exposure of fugue and canon. I must yet ask permission, therefore, for the following:

"Hasse (not a single professor who has not allowed him to be the most natural, elegant, and judicious composer now alive) discovers as much judgment as genius in expressing words."... “Gluck then studied the English taste, and ever since that time endeavoured to write more in the natural tones of the human affections than to flatter the lovers of deep science.".... "It was my (Gluck's) intention to confine music to its true dramatic province of assisting poetical expression.... never thought it necessary to repeat the words of the first part regularly four times, merely to finish the air where the sense is finished. . . . no divisions" (running up and down the scale for display) "in the vocal parts, no formal closes at the end... so that the music only gave energy and softness to the declamation.... the syllables indeed lengthened, and the tones of speech ascertained; but speech it was still, even in the airs."*

I quote these noble words, not to assert a theory, but to mark and signalize a contrast. There is music, throwing off the fetters of ages, returning to pristine paths, walking hand-in-hand with her sister poetry, feeling it all honor to give melodious emphasis to her salient words. But where? The stage holds up "the mirror to nature;" the church persists in burying nature in a robe of sanctity. Nature will not be cheated with "fugue and canon." The church counts it "sound judgment" to retain both! Are not musical facts again a parable?

In drawing these contrasts, I need not stop to obviate an absurd inference. We are sketching principles, not settling boundaries. Mr. Young has spoken my mind in those words of his introductory essay, "the expressiveness of the church cannot be the expressiveness of the theatre." But then he is surely as near the mark when he asserts that "inexpressive music to expressive words is godless music." Alas! we have to make our way amidst pitfalls on either side; and must not wonder if some, who have known nothing beyond the drowsy unreal form, shrink awhile from the living reality, as if it savoured of the dramatic.

And here, though our case might be considered as closed, there is yet another witness, a sort of obverse to the foregoing, we cannot altogether deem superfluous.

* Burney's Musical Tour, Vol. i. pp. 234, 264–269.

Somewhat nearer to our own times, we find a name that united the two essentials of sacred music. The Rev. Christian Ignatius Latrobe was at once a musician and a divine. Having studied the art with all the advantages of a German education, his style, though perfectly original, took much of its complexion-not from the traditional church music with which we have been so long engaged, but from that very school of Hasse, Gluck, Graun, and Haydn, we have just come from glancing at. The last-named of these great men sought to win him to his own profession, and made honourable mention of him in his autobiography. Throughout the whole course of the nobler walk to which young Latrobe actually devoted himself, his mind teemed with melodies of the most varied and original character, which, suggested in special moments, he wrought faithfully out in harmonies that evinced a command of the whole range of counterpoint; the sound so adapting itself, as if unconsciously, to the sense, that the musical idea flowed along with the words like the waters of the river in their native bed. The works he has left are abundant proof that, had he devoted himself to cathedral music, he would have just imparted to it the special qualities in which it is, generally speaking, so deficient. Indeed, that which, above all else, endears his compositions to the real Christian, is the genuine spirit of devotion that breathes throughout them. Whether it were the sufferings of Christ, the joys of a present fellowship, or the anticipations of a coming glory,-whether prayer, confession, or praise, the living spirit of the sacred theme was the intoning spirit of the sacred song.

It is not, perhaps, the least instructive fact in our history, that this union of sound music with true devotion failed of doing, on any adequate scale, what we should have ventured to call its appointed work; that, unlike Handel's masterpiece, it did not recover from its first repulse; but that, beyond the bounds of his own very musical communion, the devotional music of the good Moravian should have remained all but unknown. If there be any truth in the review we have been engaged with, the long divorce of music (save in the case of psalmody, which is peculiar) from the proper exercises of what the Bible teaches us of "common prayer," and the distinction we have just noticed between the quasi dramatic exhibition and the actual exercise of it, may explain the fact, and make this also another parable.

"All this is long ago." No doubt; yet principles remain principles. Let us see if there be not some traces of them that come nearer to our own times.

The first I shall adduce may at first sight appear capricious. It is for that very reason I take it. When all the straws observe one uniform motion, there can be no missing the conclusion. Now one would have thought that, as the adoption of a peculiar metre in the words has marked some peculiar impulse in the mind of the poet, it should have been a peculiar pleasure to the musician to throw that impulse into a discriminative form. How is it, then, that we read, in the preface to Dr. Maurice's excellent Choral Harmony, of " the great disinclination shown by all our eminent musicians, to write original tunes to hymns in peculiar metre?" Have we not here that self-same traditional instinct we have been tracing,-an indestructible clinging to the pendulum that makes even this little straw another parable?

But let us take a graver portion of this "latest intelligence." Reading, the other day, in one of our influential periodicals, an elaborate article, of some forty-five octavo pages, entitled "Sacred and Service Music," I found the writer attributing" the decline of Catholic Service music," amongst other causes, to the "fascinations of rhythmical melody;" and reckoning amongst the excellencies of Palestrina a certain "melodious flow without that rhythmical recurrence which is always dangerous in the church." Here we have, in this nineteenth century, a protest, ex cathedrd, against that very rhythm rejected in the sixth by pope Gregory. Words without rhythm are dead words; but "rhythmical recurrences are always dangerous in the church! Is it not plain that, if we have had a reformation for the words, we want the corresponding one for the notes ?

But I will not enter on commentaries: here is another fact, that must have presented itself, I had almost said in every parish in which the Christian Observer is held in honour. Be it only premised that, in adducing it, I am not committed to Jackson's Te Deum as a normal type. But, then, I can no more see it ostracised without asking the reason. It may not be very profound in its technical character; its harmonies may want occasional piquancy; it has, no doubt, the logical blunder Mr. Young has adverted to,-a blunder, be it observed, with those who pointed the Te Deum for chanting. All this notwithstanding, its clear, unbroken, and not inexpressive melody, absence of involution, and perhaps the very simplicity of its harmonic structure, have made it congregationally acceptable. I will not, of course, affirm that every single individual sings it. What is there that everybody does sing? What that everybody says, or was ever intended, as of necessity, orally to say, in our public devotions? Over and above the undeniable fact, that all have not the native faculty of singing, and that, if they assumed it, they would infallibly silence those who have, there are various reasons— some of them, no doubt, frivolous enough-why, even of those who can sing, no small number never care to do so. There is also that very habitual coldness, as regards liturgical music, of which we are tracing the origin,―a coldness that, once established, perpetuates itself, even where the originating cause may have been abated. Meanwhile, it is not the fact that the measure of actual singing measures the beneficial enjoyment of the music. Nothing is more unphilosophical in point of theory; nothing more false in point of experience. I am not, of course, derogating from the abstract duty of congregational singing; but I affirm, without the slightest hesitation, that even this, like every other principle, may be carried to an empirical absurdity; that the organic utterance is one thing, the internal, heartfelt utterance another; and that, as "the woman of a sorrowful spirit" was not one whit the less earnest though" her lips moved, but her voice was not heard," so many an earnest worshipper amongst ourselves may be making sweet melody, of note as well as word, whilst there is no outward sound for the stander-bye.

Of Jackson's Te Deum we may say, that, whether sung with the voice or but with the heart only, it has the essential quality we are intent upon. There is a pellucidness in the music. The words shine through. They are neither drowned in recondite harmonies, nor distorted by a purely technical progression of the melodies; nor are their

rhythm, accent, and proper power masked in indiscriminate "white notes," called minims.

Now I put it to your readers to say what is passing at this very moment before their eyes; whether there is not, in one place, the substitution of some older service-in another, of some English chant,perhaps by way of accommodation to the general, not the rhythmical sense, two, three, or more of the same inexorable chants to the same singing of the same hymn; in some extreme cases, even an attempted return to the uncouthness of the Gregorian-anything, so as to get rid of rhythmical Jackson. There can be no mistake in all this; it is the "old leaven."

But I must conclude; though many things remain unsaid. It were well if all the difficulties were from without; well if those who intelligently love the words would as intelligently estimate what is at stake in the music that has such power either to energize or neutralize them; well if those who know and feel that power would rise to the assertion of its responsibilities as they are revealed in the Word of God; well if those who are personally beyond its influence would at least apply, in simple faith, the Scripture standard-take God's own testimony to it, and "look also," as good members of the mystical body, "on the things of others." Few things are more wanting amongst us than this harmony of membership: few things more essentially discordant than the repulsive, I might say censorious apathy daily manifested by those who profess to "love the brotherhood," towards all that does not just come within the organic peculiarities, sometimes the nervous temperaments of pure individualism. But I forbear; be all this as it may, one thing is plain and palpable -we are in a transition state as regards church music. There is a movement, more or less developed, beneath the whole surface of our evangelical congregations. It is a very natural and a very inevitable one; and it were the grossest folly to ignore or trifle with it. It may be directed. I for one should be indignant at the attempt, though it would assuredly fail, to tread it down. But it is impossible to disguise the fact, that, broadly speaking, the movement goes, at present, to technicalize, rather than devotionalize, our liturgical music. There may be equal peril on the side of confidence and of obstruction. At all events, things cannot remain as they are. Those who are sacredly bound to "prove all things," and "hold fast that which is good," must give their minds to the subject, choose their ground, and stand prepared either to give, advisedly, the word of encouragement, or to say, kindly but faithfully, the "sic volo,"-perhaps the "sic jubeo,"possibly even with the other contingencies of the sentence I forbear from quoting.

To conclude, then. I have been content-at paraphrastic length, for avoidance of technical terms, and with dreadful audacity as regards all traditional authorities-to indicate what military men would call "the key of the position." It is no question of sacred music in general, nor of the music of psalmody, but, simply and specifically, of liturgical music; and this, however involving proofs and illustrations, may be stated in the briefest compass. It is a question of heart music, or head music-music, that is, that breathes and stimulates devotional feelings, or that chokes and buries them in pedantic inanities; of

rhythmical music or pendulum music-the music, that is, that faithfully expresses, and "gives life," as Luther says, to "words that burn," or the music that smoulders down and quenches their sacred fire in seductive notes; of the music of those who are neither too worldly nor too cold to mourn and be made "joyful in the house of prayer"-the music, therefore, that has the savour of spiritual life, or the music of dulness and formalism, that smells of the charnel-house, and has the savour of death; a question, in short, of the music of the church of the living God, of Ambrose, and Austin, and Paul, and David, and Moses, or the technically called "church music," that "per varios casus, per tot discrinina rerum," is, in fact, lineally descended, with notable modifications and alleviating accomplishments, but withal too much of its native instincts, from pope Gregory, surnamed the Great, who, though himself, we trust, a godly man, was the undoubted founder of many most unwholesome ritualities of the ungodly papal system.

This is the real question I have had at heart. If I have but succeeded in stirring it, I can leave the issue in His hands whose honour it nearly concerns.

PRESBYTER.

UNFULFILLED PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

[We have much pleasure in giving insertion to this paper, which is placed in our hands by an esteemed dignitary of the Irish church. At the same time, we must add, the Christian Observer does not undertake to advocate exclusively the views of any one school of prophetic interpretation.-EDITOR.]

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

"AND beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." (Luke xxiv. 27.)

There has been heretofore no backwardness in any section of the christian world, in admitting that Moses and the prophets testified of Jesus: nay, their bearing upon the chief points of the gospel history and doctrine, has been a standing argument with writers on the Christian evidences. But is it well to stop short here; and by a sort of tacit universal agreement to conclude that, with the exception of some mysterious passages of Isaiah and Ezekiel, the elder prophets have fulfilled their mission; have prepared the way of the Lord, and are now waxed old and become as an ancient record? Do not the recent attacks of those daring heretics who seek to rob us of the entire testimony of our ancient Scriptures, prove how much we need to be stirred up by our Lord's significant warning, "From him that hath not (improves not that which he has received) shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have."