very unhappily.' And again as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1766-Nor will it be a small benefit, if in the course of your liturgical instructions you can persuade the bulk of your congregations to join in the decent use of psalmody, as their forefathers did, instead of the present shameful neglect of it by almost all, and the conceited abuse of it by a few.' 2 On this latter point occasion may be found to make a few remarks in another chapter. It is sufficient here to say that the abuses and negligences which very commonly prevailed in the manner of conducting the singing, were quite as great hindrances to a solemn and instructive style of church music as any deficiencies in the metrical versions which were employed.

In fact, congregational singing had, in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, fallen, through various reasons, into a very discreditable condition, both in the English Church and among Dissenting communities; and reform of some kind or another was ardently desired by all who took any intelligent interest in this important part of public worship. In this situation,' writes an earnest champion of psalm-singing in contradistinction to what he called 'human compositions,' 'the hymn-makers find the Church, and they are suffered to thrust out the Psalms to make way for their own compositions, of which they have supplied us with a vast variety, collection upon collection, and in use too, new hymns starting up daily, appendix added to appendix, sung in many congregations, yea admired by very high professors to such a degree that the Psalms are become quite obsolete, and the singing of them is now almost as despicable as it was some time among the profane. I know,' he adds, 'that this is a sore place, and I would touch it gently, as gently as I can with any hope of doing good. The value of poems above psalms is become so great, and the singing of men's words, so as quite to cast out the word of God, is become so universal, except in the Church of England, that one scarce dare speak upon the subject. . . . I blame nobody for singing human compositions. My complaint is against preferring men's poems to the good word of God, and preferring them to it in the Church. I have no Second Charge as Bishop of Oxford.-Secker's Eight Charges, p. 65. 2 Third Canterbury Charge, Id. 319.

quarrel with Dr. Watts, or with any living or dead versifier. I would not have all their poems burnt. My concern is to see Christian congregations shut out divinely inspired Psalms, and take in Dr. Watts' flights of fancy, as if the words of a poet were better than those of a prophet.''

These words of a good man introduce us to a controversy that has long ago worn itself out, but which once interested and disturbed the minds of many worthy Christian peoplethe question whether any hymns but those of David, and such others as are taken directly from Scripture, could properly be sung in the worship of the Church. There were some strait Nonconformists who objected to any kind of psalmody. The only Scriptural singing, they said, was from the heart. A strong party among the Baptists did not overcome their scruples on this point till after the middle of the century.2 Of course there was no such feeling as this in the English Church. And yet the 'Defences of Church Music,' published by Dodwell,3 by Dr. Bisse, and by G. Payne," and some expressions in the 'Spectator,' seem to show that, owing probably to the very unsatisfactory condition into which congregational singing had fallen, there were many who would willingly have dispensed altogether with the musical part of the service. The extract, however, quoted from Romaine is but one instance among numberless others of a frequent opinion, which may perhaps be traced in every age of the Church until the present one. The hymns of the early Church were many; and some very beautiful ones were composed by some of the most illustrious among its saints. But Chrysostom and others tell us that the Psalms consti

1 Romaine's Essay on Psalmody, 105-6. In a later edition (1775) of this work, Romaine expunged his severe animadversions on modern hymns. We no longer,' said Toplady, 'read of Watts' hymns being Watts' whims.'-(Toplady to Lady H., in Life and Times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, ii. 66.)— The passage is, however, left both as representing what was for a long time Romaine's own opinion, and also a very common feeling among Churchmen.

2 Ivimey's Hist. ii. 373, and Marlow's Discourse against Singing,' quoted in Skeats' Hist. of the Free Churches, 92.

Dodwell characteristically dwelt on the power of sacred music in repelling and disabling evil spirits.-Brokesby's Life, 359.

Nichols' Lit. Anecd. i. 120.

'Defence of Church Music,'-Sermon at the Anniversary Meeting of the Spectator, No. 630.

Three Choirs.

tuted the special, if not the exclusive, hymnody of Christian worship. The use of other hymns was specially condemned by a Canon of the Council of Laodicea in the fourth century,2 and was made by St. Augustine a point of accusation against the Donatists. The Canon of Laodicea was repeated twelve centuries later in a decree of the Council of Braganza in 1563. However certain it might be that Christian Churches would not consent to be deprived of the public use of their rich and ever increasing inheritance of sacred song, there was evidently something of a scarcely licensed irregularity in the use of these later hymns. A similar feeling existed to some extent in the Reformed Churches. The improvement of congregational singing was a special object with Wickliffe and later reformers. Yet it was only in Germany that the ferment of religious feeling found any general vent in popular hymns. It may seem strange that translations of them were not largely introduced into England. But the foreign Protestant Churches with which the English reformers were at one time brought into close intercourse, were chiefly Calvinistic, and Calvin was by no means inclined to permit the Psalms to be in the smallest degree supplanted in the churches over which he exercised his dictatorship. He would not absolutely exclude other hymns; 'but,' said he, 'you may search far and near, but you will not find better hymns than those of Holy Scripture.' 6

The popular hymns, therefore, of the eighteenth century— 'collection upon collection, appendix upon appendix '—were altogether a new phenomenon, if not in the Christian Church in general, yet at all events in England. They were caught up at once by large masses of the people; but it cannot be wondered at that they were regarded by many with great suspicion, and often vehemently resisted. It is perfectly needless to recall the arguments by which they were supported or opposed. They maintained their ground, and have fairly won the day. Religion in England owes no insignificant debt

1 Felix Bovet, Histoire du Psautier, p. 14, and Appendix, 207. * The 59th. See Id.

4 Id.

Augustine. Ep. 19; in Id. 5 Fraser's Magazine, Sept. 1860, 300.

• Calvin's Preface to the Liturgy, quoted by Bovet, 207.

to the hymns which the last century produced in such copious abundance. The dissertations by which Watts, Toplady, and others prefaced their hymns, with the object of showing by careful arguments, derived alike from history and reason, that hymns other than those taken from Scripture might lawfully and properly be used in the public services of the Church, have no other interest now, except as memorials of past controversy.

It may be said to be the peculiar privilege of hymnwriters that to a great extent they write, not for any one society of Christians, but for the Church at large. Men whose theological views contrast most strongly meet on common ground when they express in verse the deeper aspirations of the heart, and the voice of Christian praise. Isaac Watts (1674-1748), like many others to whom we owe some excellent hymns, was a Dissenter. His father, a deacon of the Independents, had suffered imprisonment for his opinions at a time when toleration was scarcely yet known. Many of our readers may remember a painting, exhibited a few years ago, of the mother suckling her child on the steps of Southampton gaol, within which her husband lay confined. Nonconformity, which at the beginning of the eighteenth century was at about its lowest ebb, may well cherish his memory with gratitude, not only because of his hymns, but because his scholarship and his acquaintance with men of letters did much to redeem Dissent from the charge of narrowness and littleness,' and still more, because in days of inertness and indifference he strenuously maintained the better traditions of the old Puritanism. He was a link also between the clergymen whose services had been unhappily lost to the English Church through the Act of Uniformity, and the pious revivalists whose energies failed at length to find scope within her borders in the last century. He had been the intimate friend of John Howe; forty years later he became the friend and adviser of George Whitefield.'

1

His Hymns and Spiritual Songs' were published in 1707. 'Give us something better, young man,' had been the reply,3 when he complained of the want of good hymns; and he had set to work to attempt some remedy for the defect.

1 Skeats' H. of the F. Ch. 256.

F. Saunders' Evenings with the Sacred Poets, 283.

2 Id. 257.

His first hymn, published as a sample of what was to come, was upon Revelation v. 9 (a text with which his book was afterwards headed), and was entitled, with that want of religious modesty and taste which was his chief fault, 'A new Song to the Lamb that was Slain.'1

In

Watts' psalms and hymns are of very unequal merit. the first place, he wrote far too many. Among four hundred hymns, and an almost corresponding bulk of verses in his adaptations of the Psalms, besides lyrical poems,' there could not fail to be a great deal that might have been advantageously altered or omitted. But in any case his sacred poetry would have abounded in faults. The strong and narrow dogma of the school of religious thought to which he belonged is sometimes expressed with most repellent harshness. Watts held a most dismal view of human nature. There are passages in his writings which show that he occasionally recoiled from following out his Calvinism to its ultimate consequences. But in his eyes the world was nothing but a dreadful ruin, 'wherein lie millions of rebels against their Creator, under condemnation to misery and death, who are at the same time sick of a mortal distemper, and disordered in their minds even to distraction. . . . Only here and there one attends to the proclamation of grace, and complies with the proposals of peace.' The sufferings of mankind and he drew a dreadful and exaggerated picture of them he regarded not as trials, not as wholesome chastisement, but as an imputed curse. 'And,' added he, 'it is most abundant goodness that mankind have any comforts left, and that their miseries are not doubled.'3 Even children, tender as he was to them, he regarded with a sort of compassionate shudder. Cast a glance,' he cried, 'at the sports of children from five to fifteen years of age. What toys and fooleries are these! Would a race of wise and holy beings waste so many years of early life on such wretched trifles?' As for the world, it is 'base as the dirt beneath my feet, And mischievous as hell.' 5

So also in its opening verse :

'Prepare new honours for His name
And songs before unknown.'

2 Watts' Ruin and Recovery of Mankind, 89-90. Works, ix. 375.

Id. p. 80.

Quoted in J. Wesley

3 Id. p. 73.

Id. ii. 10.