Correspondence.

ON|ment, and rolls on with such a passionate fluency, that I cannot conclude it to be finally declaratory of the well-weighed, sober, Christian opinions of the gifted and respected writer. Surely he must himself see, now that the 'fine frenzy' of his eloquent rage is over, that there is in what he has written very much of overstatement, invective, charity, and unwarrantable imputation, of which it behoves him to be heartily repentant.

Correspondence-Old Mortality on Esthetic Cant,

tones. To me, on the other hand, it seems quite likely that in that striking Scriptural phrase the beauty of holiness something more may be meant than a single reference to the abstract excellence of faith and virtue that if to be holy is to be beautiful, it must needs be that beauty is the congenial tribute and revenue of holiness; and that whatsoever is fair and rich in thought and work-in the fruits of benevolence, the flowers of art, the pearls of song may well and fitly be offered in His service who is the God of Beauty as well as Truth, and at the cradle-shrine of whose well-beloved and only begotten Son, wise men, in the pure enthusiasm of a pious instinct, once laid their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. Therefore, (with becoming deference to 'Old Mortality,') I cannot see that increase of refinement is symptomatic of waning spirituality, and I demur to the insinuation that prayer is more accepted from a barn than from a building of greater architectural pretensions, or that praise is comelier when presented with unskilled uncouthness, than in forms of symmetric melody. I have no scorn-I have no feeling but of respect for the homely methods in which a humble and unlettered piety seeks to express itself; but I must acknowledge that I do not think 'Yates' would be a less godly person without his whining,' nor do I consider that Bates' would preach the gospel with less impressiveness if he did not 'bawl.' Is there, I would ask, no indication in Divine Revelation of the office and function of the Esthetic faculty? Is there no warrant for the consecration of the choicest developments of intellectual activity-of art and architecture, and poetry, and music, to the service of the sanctuary? Is there nothing of the sort inherent in the very idea of sacrificesacrifice, the soul and virtue of all religion the surrender of our dearest, fairest, best to Him who has given us all? Is there no lesson for Christian hearts and hands in

57

the costly furniture of the Mosaic tabernacle-in the splendid vestments of the Levitical priesthood— in the gorgeous decorations and solemn ritual of Solomon's templein the lutes and cymbals and ordered service of Hebrew song? Were all these offensive to the Most High? and if not, will He look with disfavour on the like things made sacred by an earnest and pious spirit now? Is it wrong that where we have given our love and adoration, we should give tokens of them, the rarest and the richest that we canthat where our heart is, should our treasure be? In truth I venture to think not, and to hope that He who looks more to the inward motive than to the outward manifestation, and who accepts alike the widow's mite, and Mary's alabaster box of precious ointment, will scorn nothing that is offered and done with love and in the grace of gratitude.

2. Concerning the special allusion to the services of a particular cougregation which is so racily written, and bears on the surface of it such numerous characteristic marks of rhetorical exuberance, I have simply to say that I have gathered from trustworthy sources, (and occasional personal observation enables me to corroborate the statement,) that the representations of Old Mortality' are not in this instance borne out by the facts of the case. I find it difficult to believe that there is such a complete and supercilious monopoly of the musical part of the service as is asserted by this writer. It seems incredible that any who desire to join in the psalmody are either laughed at, or sneeringly told that they must learn first, and till then must be content with silence;' or that with a kind of systematic and gratuitous mockery the chants as soon as learned by the body of the congregation are put aside and new ones introduced.' The old familiar melodies' over whose desuetude 'Old Mortality' is eloquently pathetic, are I suppose the Lydias and Cranbrooks of blessed memoryfull of unexpected shakes and ' vain

repetitions'-combinations for the most part of jerky inharmonious notes which loudly emitted in concert with wind instruments and fiddles, our venerable friend finds more conducive to a praiseful mood than the simpler airs bequeathed by formalists like Gregory and Luther, or the purer modern melodies culled from the treasures of sacred German song. 'Old Mortality' denounces and ridicules the endeavour to express the fluctuations of thought and emotion in a hymn by correspondent changes of time and tone, and complains bitterly that the music is made reflective of the meaning. Does he wish for perfect uniformity of sound and time? Would he insist on all hymns, no matter how various in character, on every verse of the same hymn, no matter how contrasted soever in sentiment one verse may be with another, being sung with equal volume and in identical time? Does he consider that physical ability and the current mood alone conditionate the function of the individual in congregational psalmody? If so, the introduction of music into divine service is a mistake, and the hymn had better be simply recited-said, not sung; for the theory of musical expression implies a presumed correlation of sense and sound, and the highest office of musical art consists in the attempt to interpret dramatically the incommunicable sympathies of man; to translate into what Beethoven has finely called a 'higher revelation than words,' those inarticulate but most real and earnest yearnings of his nature that unite him with an infinite life-that mysterious spiritual interior melody that is never silent within his soul, but murmurs for ever, like the ocean-tone inside the shell, a lingering echo from the half-remembered dialect of a far-off home.

certain Baptist deacon whom I know, who in his unreasoning aversion to anything liturgical, declared most earnestly that he objected to the Lord's Prayer in toto. And in this onslaught on the Church, (whose writers, by the way, he has not scrupled to cite with seeming approval,) he has not disdained to call in the suspicious aid of an American Pantheist. There is,' he says, 'an institution in the bosom of British society more fatal to conscientious principle, and more destructive to true religion than any contemporary enemy of piety. That institution is the worldly corporation which passes by the style and title of the Church of England.' Now of course I am fully sensible of many and grave defects existing in the National Church of these realms, and I no more claim for her an unmixed excellence than for our political constitution theoretic perfection and administrative purity. I am conscious of the prodigious difficulties involved in the alliance of the secular and spiritual powers. I am aware of the unjust distribution of the patronage and emoluments of the Church. I lament the incommensurate pay of the working clergy. I see that there are relics of superstition still lingering in the Book of Common Prayer. I acknowledge that the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration is the first, the obvious, the honest deduction from the service used in the 'ministration of public baptism of infants.' I object to priestly absolution and to the damnatory clauses of the creed incorrectly ascribed to Athanasius. I allow the urgent need of liturgical revision. And yet, with all these admissions, I am bound to observe that the Anglican Church represents the religious convictions and rivets the earnest allegiance of a very large body of devout, intelligent and culti3. I pass on to the concluding vated people, and that continually a portion of Old Mortality's' remarks vast myriad of worshipping hearts wherein he expresses his opinions pour themselves forth through her and feelings concerning the Estab- incomparable forms of praise and lished Church of the country with a prayer. I cannot myself help revehemence which reminds me of amembering, I cannot help reminding

Correspondence-Old Mortality on Esthetic Cant.

59

endorse these severe and passionate words? Can 'Old Mortality' look fairly round him and honestly say that the character and efforts of the majority of the clergy are not maligned and parodied in the picture which he offers for our approbation? Old Mortality' mistakes violence for strength, declamatory intemperance for the genuine afflatus, and in closing his diatribe has with consistent perversity preferred a prayer in the spirit of an indictment,' (as Robert Hall once wrote of Bishop Horsley), and inscribed on his schismatic banner the names of some of the most illustrious chiefs of British Nonconformity, irrelevantly as it seems to me, and vainly; for I cannot but believe that those saintly spirits in their catholic sympathy would have waved a deprecating hand above these testy ebullitions of sectarian bitterness, and earnestly conjured us to look though accidental divergencies of verbal creed and ecclesiastical polity to the substantial affinities of faith and feeling-to those fundamental needs and instinctiva aspirations of a common nature which impel us to the same allmerciful Saviour, and point us to the same eternal home.

'Old Mortality' that for this Church | minded, large - hearted Dissenters, martyrs have perished, saints have laboured, whose names are sacred and dear to every section of God's large family. This is the Church of Latimer and Leighton; of Hooker and Butler; of William Wilberforce and Henry Martyn. It was as a faithful minister of this Church that the brave old Ken charged upon the dying Stuart the vices of his life; and it was within its hallowed precincts that Herbert chanted his devout and thoughtful verse. Can such a Church be fitly described as a mountainous power of evil? Can that Church be a monster of iniquity' out of whose bosom Keble has poured forth the music of the Christian Year;' in whose communion Arnold lived and toiled, teaching alike by life and lip the nobleness of duty and reverence, the priceless worth of truth in word and work-Arnold, to whom the Rugby boys said it was too bad to tell a lie, he always believed them Arnold, the footprints of whose intellectual pathway are luminous over all England now? Are we well-advised when we are invited to 'fling ourselves with deadly antagonism on a Church in which a Whately is yet enforcing Christian logic-a Milman still writing Christian history-a Stanley, an Alford, an Ellicott, devoting to the use and comfort of the universal Church the fruits of Christian scholarship? I shall be told that the adhesion of men pious and gifted does not of itself constitute a cause or an institution righteous and true; but it presents at least presumptive proof that it contains elements of good; that it is not an engine of sheer mischief and unmitigated evil; and if on this ground only, I will take emphatic exception to the sweeping assertions of a writer who has sufficient temerity to announce that the Established Church of England is using every conventional motive, every worldly motive, every fleshly bait # * to seduce to its embrace the man of mere taste ?' Will thoughtful, broad

*

OLD

I remain, dear Sir,

Very faithfully yours, OLD MORTALITY'S NEPHEW.

MORTALITY ON

ESTHETIC CANT.

To the Editor of the Gen ral Baptist
Magazine.

DEAR MR. EDITOR,-I am a General Baptist, a liberal, a working Nonconformist, and a regular reader of your Magazine, and cannot but take exception to some portions of 'Old Mortality's' paper on Esthetic Cant in the current number.

Against the system of that worldly corporation that passes by the style and title of the Church of England,' I could feel as strongly as 'Old

6

certain Baptist deacon whom I know, who in his unreasoning aversion to anything liturgical, declared most earnestly that he objected to the Lord's Prayer in toto. And in this onslaught on the Church, (whose writers, by the way, he has not scrupled to cite with seeming approval,) he has not disdained to call in the suspicious aid of an American Pantheist. 'There is,' he says, an institution in the bosom of British society more fatal to conscientious principle, and more destructive to true religion than any contemporary enemy of piety. That institution is the worldly corporation which passes by the style and title of the Church of England.' Now of course I am fully sensible of many and grave defects existing in the National Church of these realms, and I no more claim for her an unmixed excellence than for our political constitution theoretic perfection and administrative purity. I am conscious of the prodigious difficulties involved in the alliance of the secular and spiritual powers. I am aware of the unjust distribution of the patronage and emoluments of the Church. I lament the incommensurate pay of the working clergy. I see that there are relics of superstition still lingering in the Book of Common Prayer. I acknowledge that the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration is the first, the obvious, the honest deduction from the service used in the 'ministration of public baptism of infants.' I object to priestly absolution and to the damnatory clauses of the creed incorrectly ascribed to Athanasius. I allow the urgent need of liturgical revision. And yet, with all these admissions, I am bound to observe that the Anglican Church represents the

repetitions'-combinations for the most part of jerky inharmonious notes which loudly emitted in concert with wind instruments and fiddles, our venerable friend finds more conducive to a praiseful mood than the simpler airs bequeathed by formalists like Gregory and Luther, or the purer modern melodies culled from the treasures of sacred German song. 'Old Mortality' denounces and ridicules the endeavour to express the fluctuations of thought and emotion in a hymn by correspondent changes of time and tone, and complains bitterly that the music is made reflective of the meaning. Does he wish for perfect uniformity of sound and time? Would he insist on all hymns, no matter how various in character, on every verse of the same hymn, no matter how contrasted soever in sentiment one verse may be with another, being sung with equal volume and in identical time? Does he consider that physical ability and the current mood alone conditionate the function of the individual in congregational psalmody? If so, the introduction of music into divine service is a mistake, and the hymn had better be simply recited-said, not sung; for the theory of musical expression implies a presumed correlation of sense and sound, and the highest office of musical art consists in the attempt to interpret dramatically the incommunicable sympathies of man; to translate into what Beethoven has finely called a 'higher revelation than words,' those inarticulate but most real and earnest yearnings of his nature that unite him with an infinite life-that mysterious spiritual interior melody that is never silent within his soul, but murmurs for ever, like the ocean-tone inside the shell, a linger-religious convictions and rivets the ing echo from the half-remembered dialect of a far-off home.

3. I pass on to the concluding portion of 'Old Mortality's' remarks wherein he expresses his opinions and feelings concerning the Established Church of the country with a vehemence which reminds me of a

earnest allegiance of a very large body of devout, intelligent and cultivated people, and that continually a vast myriad of worshipping hearts pour themselves forth through her incomparable forms of praise and prayer. I cannot myself help remembering, I cannot help reminding