We should say as much of the Presbyterianism of the Middle, Western, and Southern States. We believe any of the older Protestant sects that retain a belief in the Trinity, the Incarnation, and future rewards and punishments, and that practise infant baptism, are preferable by far to any form of modern liberalism, which discards dogma for sentiment and reason for the soul, and are really nature-worshippers, and as much idolaters as were the old pagans, whose rivers and ponds, whose gardens and orchards were overrun with gods. Even a Methodist is upon the whole better than a Liberal, however puffed up he may be by the successful worship of mammon by his sect, and its growing respectability in the eyes of the world.
We have bestowed, perhaps, more attention on Mr. Beecher and his novel than they deserve, but we have made them the text for a desultory discourse, partly in defence of New England against her denigration attempted by one of her prominent sons, and partly in protest against the revival of heathen nature-worship favored by the author. We have not aimed at exalting New England above other sections of the Union. Each section of our common country has its peculiar merits, which are essential to the welfare and development of the whole. New England has hers, which, in some respects, excel those of other sections, and in other respects fall short of them. It is not for us to strike the balance, and to decide which upon the whole preponderate. We have wished to give New England her due, without detracting any thing from what is due to any other section of the Union. We should be sorry to see the effort now making to New Englandize the South succeed. There are some things in the New England character that could be corrected with advantage; and there is much in the Southern character, its openness, its frankness, its personal independence, its manliness, its aristocratic tone and manner, that we should be sorry to lose. But we do not like to find any man decrying his own native land or insensible to its merits.
CHURCH MUSIC
I.
"The Prayer of the Church is the most pleasing to the ear and heart of God, and therefore the most efficacious of all prayers." While we have been perusing the various works on church music that have come before us in the shape of book, pamphlet, tract, and magazine article, we could not keep the words we have quoted above from the celebrated Dom Gueranger out of our mind. In Europe, both in England and on the continent, it is evident, from the numerous publications pertinent to the subject which have been lately issued, that the due celebration of the divine offices of the Church is becoming more and more the object of no little anxiety on the part of the hierarchy, and that the clergy are everywhere making strenuous efforts to get rid of the abuses which since the Protestant reformation, the straitness of the times has tolerated. One of the most notorious of these abuses, fully naturalized amongst us, is the profane character of church music. Several writers, among whom stand preëminent two English priests—the Rev. Canon Oakeley and the Rev. James Nary—have crossed swords on the subject of reform, and we have thus been enabled not only to get at the merits of the particular dispute between these two amicable combatants, but have been led as well to reflect upon the primary object of music in the divine offices, the intention of the Church, and the means she has ordained for realizing it; although we must confess that, with Dom Gueranger's words ringing in our ears, we have not heard from the pages of the publications in question quite so clear an echo to their truth as we would have wished.
The ritual service of the Church is her prayer, and melody is the almost universal form of expression employed in its celebration. Whatever music is sung or performed at her solemn rites is supposed to be sung and performed by her not as a musical performance, but as a prayer. These are the points more or less ignored in all the discussions on what is or may be made suitable music for the Church. The different sentences, anthems, psalms, etc., appointed to be sung by the choir, are all so many prayers offered by the Church. Therefore it is plain that what is proper as music at her offices must as a first principle be a worthy expression of the voice of the Church lifted in prayer. When the priest, robed in his garments of sacrifice, intones the Gloria at the altar, he does so in the name of the Church, not as the Rev. Mr. —— performing a short, effective, and fine tenor solo; and when the choir continues the same angelical anthem, they do so—or rather, are supposed to do so—as his assistants in the divine action. The priest takes his seat to await its conclusion, not to make one of an audience who for the time being are to be relieved from the more engrossing thoughts of prayer by criticising the Gratias as rendered by Mr. A., enjoying the Qui tollis by Miss B., or the telling chorus of the Cum Sancto.
That the musical portions of the church offices are in a true sense prayer, and are based upon that idea alone, namely, the union of the soul with God; that such is the chief intention of the Church, and should be the only object sought in the choice of music and the execution of it, to the absolute subserviency, even if not to the completely ignoring, of every other sentiment, is therefore beyond question; but who will not be able to count upon his ten fingers the churches in the United States where the music would be likely to leave any such impression upon the minds of the worshippers?
We say this not in any cynical spirit. We know the "straitness of the times," and we ourselves have been straitened, and are still, as well as our neighbors; but the general uneasiness and discontent felt among all classes because of the wretched performances of sacred music to which we have been subjected, utterly at variance as they are with the spirit of the sublime and solemn functions of religion, is beginning to find a voice to make audible complaint, and exciting some laudable efforts to rid the holy place of harmonies which savor more of the world, the flesh, and the devil than they do of divine prayer. So common is the ignorance of what the true music of the Church is, that it is a rare thing to find even a Catholic who has any idea that the Mass has not yet been fully sung when he has heard the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei, and not a note of the Introit, Gradual, Prose, Offertory, or Communion. And as for the Vespers, we think the fingers of one hand might suffice to count the churches where any attempt is made to perform them entire. Of the compositions executed in every style of musical art at Mass, will not the first person to whom you may address yourself, be he a devout Catholic well instructed in other matters, or a music-loving Protestant who is fond of "attending service" in our churches on account of the "glorious music of the Catholic Church," which he thinks he hears there—will they not both tell you, if you are at the pains to interrogate them, that Mozart and Haydn hold the place of angelic doctors of music in the Catholic Church, and Webbe, Farmer, Concone and Co. have equally honorable titles for small churches and country choirs?
Would not either of them return you a stare of incredulity if you told them that not one composition of any of these authors has ever been recognized by any authority in the Church, and that the singing of them has, in point of fact, been only barely tolerated; that the great mass of these musical morceaux are wholly unfit for the purpose for which they were written, and that, ten chances to one, neither of these good friends have ever heard, save the chanting of the priest, one single note of the music sanctioned by the Church in all their lives? Yet all this is true to the very letter. Lamentably true; for religion, in the grandeur, power, and spiritual beauty of its sacred offices, is the loser by it, and the devout and prayerful spirit which such offices are calculated to excite in the souls of the faithful is to a great extent hindered, and replaced by a spirit of sensuousness and worldly amusement.