A formal acknowledgment on the part of the church of this principle of teaching by means of song, which at the same time proves its antiquity, though it can be hardly necessary to cite it, may be found in one of the Collects for Holy Saturday: “Deus, celsitudo humilium, et fortitudo rectorum, qui per sanctum Moysen puerum tuum ita erudire populum tuum sacri carminis tui decantatione voluisti, ut illa legis iteratio fiat etiam, nostra directio,” etc., etc.—“O God! the loftiness of the humble and the strength of them that are upright, who wast pleased, through thy holy servant Moses, to instruct thy people by the singing of a sacred song,” etc., etc.
If, then, this be a true and just view of the mission of the sacred song among the poor and the unlearned multitude, as contemplated in the divine idea; if it be true, as I suppose no one will deny, that the Ritual Chant is not only fitted to accomplish it, but has realized it in times past, and does still realize it in countries that might be named; and if the works of modern art are, from their very scientific character as music, incapable of being the medium in which divine truth can pass among the people; and, indeed, if it be their nature to give so much more of prominence to the beauty of mere sound than to the expression of intelligible meaning or sentiment, which every one knows is the case, we seem to gain this obvious result, on drawing the comparison, that the Ritual chant is a real medium or vehicle for the circulation of divine truth among the people, fitted with a divine wisdom to its end; while the great works of art that the musician so much admires are not, to any practical extent whatever, such a medium, and indeed, if the truth must be said, were probably never contemplated as such, either by those who composed or those who now admire them.
COMPARATIVE “MEDICINAL VIRTUE.”
“They that are whole need not a physician,” said our Redeemer (Mark ii. 17), “but they that are sick. I came not to call the just, but sinners to repentance.” It was part of the mission of the Son of God upon earth, that he should be the physician of the souls of men (Isaiæ lxi.): “Spiritus Domini super me, eo quod unxerit Dominus me, ut mederer contritis corde.” It will follow, then, that the music which the divine Physician of souls will desire to see employed in his church will be strongly marked with the medicinal character.
And this conclusion becomes the more natural, from observing the numberless indications which the literature of different countries affords that music has always been popularly regarded as a medicine for the spirit; as, for instance, the Greek pastoral poet, Bion:
Μολπὰν ταὶ Μοῖσαι, μοὶ ἀεὶ ποθέοντι διδοῖεν
Τὰν γλυκερὰν μολπὰν τᾶς φάρμακον ἅδιον οὐδέν.
Bionis, Bucolica, i.
“Song than which no medicine so sweet.” Among the Romans, the courtly Ovid:
“Hoc est cur cantet vinctus quoque compede fossor