THE MUSIC OF THE SANCTUARY. No. IV.-Hymns, Tunes, Chants, and Anthems. If it is important to decide who shall sing the music of the sanctuary, it is not less so to determine what shall be sung. It is to be feared that hymns and tunes are often carelessly chosen. Ministers sometimes select hymns which are wholly unsuited to the occasion, and organists and choir masters not unfrequently select tunes which certainly do not express the sentiment of the hymns. As a sample of the former, may be mentioned the minister who, at the close of his Sunday evening's discourse, gave out the hymn, "Another six days' work is done;" and the Glamorgan precentor, who insisted upon having the tune of St. Bride's for every short metre hymn, whether jubilant or plaintive, may be cited as an instance of the latter. Of course, these are extreme cases. But everyone who has carefully looked into this matter will have discovered that there is often a want of adaptation in the choice of hymns and tunes for sanctuary praise. I have heard ministers say that they find it more difficult to select hymns than texts, and probably this is a common experience; but if they will only be at the trouble and pains of making an appropriate selection from first to last, they will be amply repaid by the unity and impressiveness of the whole service, i.e. provided the organist or leader of the singing weds the words to appropriate music. It would be well to say at the outset, that not a few of the hymns which are sung in the present day are unsuitable for praise, and many are positively unscriptural in sentiment. Take Dr. Watt's collection, for instance. The volume that bears his illustrious name, valuable as it now is, would be doubled in worth by being half its size. One half of the book is most excellent; but a fourth part is never sung, and the remaining fourth never ought to be. Nor is there much improvement in what are called modern hymns. In some of our chapels, there is a mawkish sentimentality which grows rather than diminishes, in favour of supplementing the usual hymn book, with certain popular Church of England hymnals; but if the old orthodox views which form the bulwarks of our protestantism and nonconformity are to be preserved among us, it would be better for the leaders of our singing to analyse the hymns as well as the tunes which they are so anxious to introduce. I would deprecate a return to the simplicities and puerile rhymes of Sternhold and Hopkins, or those of Tate and Brady, but as long as we have at command the beautiful compositions of Doddridge, Montgomery, Newton, Toplady, Wesley, Herbert, Baxter, Faber, Cennick, Lyte, Bonar, and others, we require none of the new-fangled ditties of semi-popish priests however cleverly composed and however fascinating the music to which they are set. But in almost every hymn-book there are hymns which are neither the language of direct praise, nor suited to be that medium by which we are exhorted "to teach and admonish one another." Some contain the personal experiences of the writer, which it were folly to suppose a whole congregation can sing with sincerity, such for instance as that splendid hymn of Cowper's "O for a closer walk with God." (No. 612.) where, in the second verse, all believers who sing it have to confess declension from their first love, whether such is the case or not. I can verily believe that with many of our brothers and sisters, life is now happier, sweeter, purer, than when they first saw the Lord. They have progressed, not declined. Then again, there are hymns which can only be sung on special occasions, which through carelessness of selection, are very ordinarily employed. I remember one such hymn being announced in a village chapel, prefaced with the well-known formula, "Let us sing to the praise and glory of God," which rendered it all the more difficult for me to control my risible faculties. The hymn was this :— "Lord, what a wretched land is this, That yields us no supply," &c. I for one failed to recognise the appropriateness of the selection, and still less could I see the relevance of the prefatory formula. Complaint has justly been made against the compilers of hymn-books for altering and abbreviating the compositions of some of the most celebrated hymn-writers. My esteemed pastor, the Hon. and Rev. B. W. Noel, who has lately passed away to his rest, had a weakness in this direction. In the John Street hymn book, he invariably changed the personal pronouns in many familiar hymns from the singular number to the plural, only preserving the "I" or the "me where the rhyme required it. As an instance of this, I would refer to No. 725 in the General Baptist Selection. How it mars the beauty of the original to sing it thus: "When we can read our title clear Other compilers have gone so far as to substitute a whole line or couplet, out of sheer meddlesomeness, and manifestly to the deterioration of the hymn. One of the most flagrant cases of alteration is to be found in the first verse of that popular Christmas hymn: "Hark! the herald angels sing Glory to the new-born King!" 66 Now this is historically wrong, for the multitude of the heavenly host could hardly have been herald angels, as their chorus was sung after, not before the great event of the nativity; and the burden of the chorus was, Glory to God in the highest," and not "to the new-born King.” On referring to the original composition, which is Charles Wesley's, it is found thus : "Hark! how all the welkin rings, Glory to the King of kings!" which is much more accurate and picturesque. It would not do, however, to return to the original. The power of association is too strong to allow us to throw aside the modern version, although it must be confessed, it is an alteration for the worse When The practice of curtailing hymns in public worship is much too common. the hymn contains ten or a dozen verses, curtailment is pardonable, but there is no excuse for omitting verses from a hymn of ordinary length. Ministers are much to blame in this matter. They sometimes talk ten minutes longer than they have anything to say, and then summarily dismiss the congregation with the benediction, or if there be singing at all, the usual doxology is resorted to as a substitute for the hymn that had been chosen. The service of praise, the only part of the sanctuary exercises which belongs especially to the whole congregation, ought not to be abridged. There should be more praise rather than less; and it is pleasant to the writer to observe that congregations generally approve this by having four singings at a service when formerly they had but three. Hymns should be sung through. It is old-fashioned now to give out verse by verse. Besides which, it answers no useful purpose, for the bulk of modern worshippers cannot certainly remember four lines at a stretch. In these days of cheap hymn-books, in types suitable to young and old, it is undesirable to preserve the antiquated customs of a period when hymn-books were scarce and memories prodigious. Tunes and Tune-books. Concerning tunes, it will be generally admitted that there are far too many in use, and many unworthy of preservation. Mr. Henry Ward Beecher says: "The tunes which burden our modern books by hundreds and thousands (he is referring to American tune-books), utterly devoid of character, without meaning or substance, may be sung a hundred times, and not a person in the congregation will remember them. There is nothing to remember. They are the very emptiness of fluid noise. But let a true tune be sung, and every person of sensibility, every person of feeling, every child even, is aroused and touched. The melody clings to them. On the way home snatches of it will be heard on this side and on that, and when, the next Sabbath, the same song is heard, one and another of the people fall in, and the volume grows with each verse, until at length the song, breaking forth as a many rilled stream from the hills, grows deeper, and flows on broad as a mighty river. Such tunes are never forgotten." I think that at the present moment Mr. Beecher's testimony is of great value. Choirs are too prone to sing tunes because they are classical compositions, snatches of oratorios, &c., rather than congregational. Try a congregation with a long metre hymn, first to the "Old 100th" and then to "Neapolis," and you will soon determine which is the better for united praise. I sympathise with those musicians who admire the artificial modern minors, and the delicate rhythms such as one meets with in Novello's Psalmist, but keep such tunes out of the sanctuary. They are only adapted to the drawing-room, or to those churches, if such there be, whose members are all certificated singers. There are unquestionably many tunes sung in the congregation that can never be sung by the congregation. This should be avoided. The Music of the Sanctuary. 185 So also should a super-abundance of tunes. A judicious selection should be made of from sixty to a hundred tunes; less than sixty is inadequate, and to have more than a hundred in ordinary use would prove cumbersome. Suppose you have a hundred tunes in common use. On an average each of those tunes could only be sung three times in a year, reckoning six singings to every Sabbath. What chance is there for a congregation to sing well, where new tunes are continually being introduced? When a new tune is launched, it should be used in the Sunday School first, and then for a succession of Sundays in the congregation, until it is thoroughly mastered, and if it be a tune that cannot charm the congregation in that space of time, it were well to discard it altogether. For the reasons given before, it would be unwise to introduce more than three or four new tunes in the course of a year, and there should be a corresponding deduction of old worn-out tunes, so that the total number may not be increased. Let us ever keep in mind that the end we have in view is the praise of God, and any one can see that the frequent repetition of a good old tune, will be a better means to this end, than a continual introduction of new tunes. Some tunes are so eminently adapted to certain hymns, that it would be well never to dissociate them, and the hymns thus live longer in the memory. 66 All tunes should be avoided that contain solos, duets, or fugues, and those which abound in absurd repeats, compelling unnecessary and often ridiculous divisions of sentences. It is to be regretted that this style of tune is still kept up in many of our village chapels. As a typical tune of this sort, take the old-fashioned long metre "Job." That tune, by the construction of its fourth line, cannot be sung with propriety to at least twenty good hymns in the General Baptist Selection. The fifth verse of Hymn 131 would require the repetition of the words "My soul shall bet;" the first verse of 250 " Dragged to the port ;" the first of 573, "To hear thy dic;" and the fourth of 856 "Give me a man.' Such tunes as old " Job" only mangle the sentiment of the hymn, and render the exercise of praise profane, rather than devotional. I am not wholly averse to the repetition of words or lines, but such repetition should be reasonable and proper. In some tunes it is excessive. Before me lies a tune called “Praise,” from an old collection, published in the early part of the present century. I am told that it is still sung in Cornwall and Devon. I copy the words exactly as they stand. "Let every creature, every creature, rise and bring, Peculiar honours, honours, honours to our king, to our king; Angels descend, descendangels descend with songs, with songs again—and earth repeat, and earth repeat, repeat, repeat, and earth repeat, repeat, and earth repeat, and earth repeat, repeat the loud amen, the loud amen, ameu, amen, amen." The man who composed that tune certainly thought only of the first verse, for to attempt to sing any other verse of that hymn to the same music would create a jargon of confusion better left undescribed. And sometimes these tunes are sung with a rapidity that makes the words wholly unintelligible, so much so, that on one occasion when a good, sober, monosyllabic tune was made use of in a church by a new choir, a lady endowed with good musical taste, but without any pretension to science, remarked at the close of the service, "I can understand that it speaks to me. The tunes of the old choir always reminded me of running about after something you can't find." This paper would not be complete, if no reference were made to existing tunebooks. The question is often asked, what tune-book shall we use? First one is tried, and then other, until the singing-pew is crowded with psalmody books. This is a mark of bad management. After careful examination, one tune-book should be fixed upon, and in no case should there be a departure from it. If there happen to be one or two good tunes absolutely necessary for some of the hymns, which are wanting in the tune-book selected, they should be added in manuscript at the end, and numbered in regular order, from the last printed tune. Having made a careful analysis of all the collections of psalmody that have been issued during the last twenty years, I place "the Bristol Tune-book" in the first rank. It is thoroughly congregational, remarkably cheap, and may be had in both notations of music, which is a great consideration now there are so many disciples of John Curwen in the land. There is scarcely enough provision made in the Bristol tune-book for peculiar metres, but the compilers are now preparing a supplement which will meet the deficiency, and then this admirable collection of psalmody will stand unrivalled among the tunebooks of the day. Another advantage of having one book and keeping to it, is, that many persons in the congregation, who like to sing from notes, could then do so. Choirs must not forget that there are many worshippers able to read music as well as themselves. If, therefore, the number of the tune is announced, all may sing from the same book, and the harmony will be uniform; whereas, if in the organ gallery there be one arrangement of a tune, and in the pew another, discord is the result. Chants and Anthems. In addition to hymns, passages of scripture are now often sung either in the form of chants or anthems. Objections still exist to these two forms of praise, and some good people think them popish innovations. But why should our psalmody be wholly metrical? I long for the time to come when the beautiful poetry of scripture shall be more generally sung. Nothing to my mind seems to aid us in realising the oneness of the ancient church of God with the disciples of Christ in modern days, so much as the singing of the old temple psalms. Yet there is a strange aversion to chanting and anthem-singing in some of our churches. Watts and Doddridge are approved, but David and Asaph are proscribed. How is it? For my own part, I can find no songs in the choicest hymnals of the day one half so beautiful as the songs of the Bible—and Christians ought to sing them. Why not worship God in one of the pastoral lays of the sweet-singer of Israel? Why not extol His majesty in one of the eloquent odes of Isaiah? The herdsman of Tekoa furnishes many a sublime strain for our praise; and so do Daniel and Ezekiel. Provided the music is simple, Gregorian rather than Anglican, I see no reason why chanting should not be a feature in all our services. Some people think they get half-way to that by chanting hymns, a practice which has my unqualified disapprobation. It is like harnessing one of Pickford's waggon-horses to a lady's light phaeton. The metrical form of the hymn demands a corresponding metrical form of tune, and the chant does not answer to that. If the hymn is a bad one it is made worse, and if it be a good one its beauty is marred by chanting it. "A place for everything and everything in its place." Hymns and chants were not made for each other—and they ought not to be thrust into an unnatural relationship. Chanting the scriptures, except by cathedral choirs, is confessedly a difficult thing to accomplish, yet I have heard a whole congregation at Union chapel, (Rev. Dr. Allon's) Islington, do it with proper regard to punctuation and expression, and what one congregation can do, another may. I hope in my concluding paper to touch upon the methods of improving psalmody, when I shall have occasion to refer again to Mr. Allon's church. Anthem-singing is perhaps a simpler form of praising God in the words of scripture. Provided the anthem be free from fugue and single voice parts, a congregation may learn to sing it in half the time it takes to learn chanting. I plead for greater variety in this department. There should be more than one or two in use. "I will arise" and Camidge's "Sanctus are sung in many chapels until they are worn threadbare. It would be easy to select a dozen good anthems from the "Weigh House Series," and Mr. Curwen's "Congregational Anthems," such as a whole congregation could sing, and then the monotony of repeating the same anthem Sunday after Sunday would be avoided. By using chants and anthems in addition to the best hymns, the service of praise is beautifully varied, and it may be that by singing the words of scripture, we are rehearsing the very songs we shall sing in heaven. T. RYDER. [The next paper will treat of organs and instruments of music.] "THE ANGEL AND THE CHILD." From the French of Jean Reboul. AN angel of radiant visage "Sweet child, of myself the resemblance," Here never complete is the gladness; A fear haunts the brightest occasions; 'Gainst the shock of the dread and dark tempest Ripley. What cares and vexations might trouble Then why should they darken thy dwelling Their faces then be without sorrow; Let nothing give sign of a tomb; For a flower pure as thee, there is waiting And spreading his dazzling white pinions PAPERS ON PREACHING. No. III.-The Physiology of Preaching. A BRIEF experience of the preacher's work is generally sufficient to show that the care of the body demands a forward place in the daily thought and regular drill of the successful minister of the Word. Health is a part, and a large part too, of the thinking and preaching force; and its tone, quality, and degree, make themselves felt in every sermon composed, every address delivered, and in all pastoral work done. In a few solitary instances, weak and ever-ailing men have accomplished a sublime mission. Disease has retreated before an iron will. Bravely, almost fiercely, have they fought, and wrested the prize from the enemies' grip, though on the verge of the grave. But nine men out of ten find that defective health means weak thinking, vigourless expression, lack of impressive power, and general inefficiency. A bad liver makes bad theology. A deranged " equatorial zone" checks thought in the study, fetters the lips in the pulpit, and lowers the value of the preacher a hundred per cent. Sweet strains of music do not issue from a piano out of tune, though the keys are struck by the most skilful fingers. Paul's career would have lost much of its grandeur of conception and result had he not possessed an exuberant healthfulness, a compact, well-knit, wiry frame, and a nervous temperament, all under wise command, and subjected to regular discipline. A healthy ministry is as necessary as an "earnest one." The physiology of preaching is only second to its spirituality and man-building power. A dozen years of ministerial work make it impossible to question this. But students at college, or just entering upon their pastorates, in their eager and impetuous haste to get knowledge, perfect their mental drill, and perform their Master's will, find it unbearably irksome to take on solicitudes about this "vile body," and "cater" for its well-being as though its resources were not exhaustless and its power could not bear any strain. Buoyant, zealous, and ambitious, they despise counsels of health. Working far into the night does not harm them. Irregularities of diet and sleep are not immediately chastised. Justice walks with stealthy steps, and they hear not her tread. Youth is on their side, and they draw on their strength without "feeling" any worse for it. But the reckoning day comes. Ignorance of the laws of health, heedlessness as to the future, and far off results of present disobedience, bad habits of study, the abnormal stimuli of tobacco and alcohol, insufficient nutrition, imperfectly oxygenated blood; these, all together in some cases, and in others two or three of them, produce at length that too-familiar object, a sore-throated, cadaverous, dyseptic invalid, whose good-doing is reduced to the miserable limits of giving forth an unheeded warning of the penalties that follow the infraction of the laws of physical life. And even if there be not this utter breakdown, yet we see a crippling depression of vitality, a total lack of that spontaneous, overflowing healthfulness, that makes exertion easy and welcome, thought flow like an inspiration, temper genial and even, and energy always in excess. There is no buoyancy, no power of rapid recuperation, no "wire" in the man. He works as if he always heard the nails being driven into his coffin, and, in a sense different from what Baxter intended, preaches like "a dying man to dying men." Dr. Hart, a high authority, declares, "From a large acquaintance with literary and professional men, and after a careful survey of the whole subject, it is my sober judgment that more educated men fail of distinction through the want of bodily vigour than from any other cause." Not a month elapses without affording fresh illustrations of this statement. Gifted and godly men miscalculate the force of the machine with which they work, or misunderstand the conditions under which it serves the mind and heart most effectively, and so injure it and paralyze themselves. Unquestionably, real and enduring success in the ministry cannot now, if ever it could, be won without severe and continuous labour. Men occupying the topmost heights of ministerial power have had immense energy and fire, a fervid glow, a prodigious capacity for plodding, singular patience in the mastery of details, and a persistent process of self-discipline; and all this means deep and prolonged draughts on the physical force. The pace of this hurrying and bustling generation has communicated itself to the pulpit. To be in the front of the race, indeed, to get any footing on the course, tremendous exertions are necessary. We must not spare ourselves and work in the comfortable style of our fathers. There is something more to be done now a days besides reading a chapter in Hebrew, and another in Greek in the |