his wife) indulge in that luxury to the bewilderment of the Chinese who fondly thought there was one tune for everybody except the harmonium. Incidentally I have a fad about the use of that instrument, which is that it is often a far greater help to play the air in octaves with the two hands two octaves apart than to play the four-part harmonies as set. And many a missionary who "can't play or I would," could easily learn to do this with a very little expenditure of time and trouble.

But to return to my pet hobby. We have got, as a rule, to aim at unison singing. Now there are tunes which admit of this, and there are tunes which depend largely on their harmonies for their beauty and for their effectiveness. Let us be careful which we choose. The best test I know is to try which of them are most satisfactory when sung without the overworked harmonium. But when we come to speak of tunes, there is the bugbear of Chinese music held up in front of us. Now my hobby-horse positively refuses to go that road, and for this reason or reasons. First, he says he does not see why he should, in view of the fact that he has no confidence in the eternal properties of that music, and of the more important fact that he has heard very little of it which can, by any stretch of imagination, be called devotional. Secondly, he says that the road he prefers, in that direction (please mark the limitation), is the well-worn road of Gregorian music, which has much in common with the best Chinese music, which lends itself to unison singing because it never knew any parts, and which is, as a rule, only avoided because people have never tried it or have tried it blindfold and naturally stumbled. Seriously, there is much more to be said for Gregorian music than is commonly thought, especially out here in China. It is essentially good; there is nothing bad about it, and it is necessarily self-restrained, so that it is well-fitted for devotional use. (I might add that its unpopularity is almost an argument in its favour, in view of what I have said above.) It has the prescription of centuries of use, and that appeals to the Chinese mind no less than its curious runs appeal to their ear. It fell into disuse in England and in Germany because it was unfitted for what I have called edification, or at least was not so well fitted for that as the old Psalm-tunes or the magnificent German chorales. But it ought never to have gone out of use for devotional purposes, and it is for these purposes that it claims reintroduc

tion at home, and for these purposes that I plead for its adoption in China. By all means let us introduce the best of our more modern music, and even that poorer article which has proved so effective in stirring men's hearts and souls to enthusiasm and to love. But when we are searching about for devotional music let us at least give a fair trial (and not a blind-fold trial) to the music which has come down through the centuries, which binds us to the early ages of the Church of God, which commends itself upon so many grounds, both practical and ideal, as befitting the worship of Almighty God.

WE

Church Music

BY REV. D. Z. SHEFFIELD, D.D.

E find recorded at the early dawn of Jewish history that music set to sacred words was employed in public worship. These songs were always inspired with a deep sense of dependence on God. They were sometimes an expression of thanksgiving for deliverance from imminent danger, again of victory over enemies, or again of public thanksgiving for the abundant blessings of life. There is evidence that music was cultivated in the School of the Prophets under Samuel, and that it had a great expansion in public worship under David and in the temple services under Solomon. Perhaps there is nothing more difficult to understand in the unfolding of the religious life of the Jewish people than the marvelous outgoing of the human heart towards God in the body of Psalms which is instinct with the life of God and of human aspiration for fellowship with Him. We are at best in possession of only broken fragments of knowledge of the political and social conditions in which the lives of those wonderful singers were cast, and we know still less as to their individual lives. Like the music of the lark in Shelly's skylark, they seem like voices speaking down to men from out the pure empyreum, like disembodied spirits pouring out their adoration and praise before the throne of God, and yet with such a sense of human dependence and need that their aspirations after God have formed the golden channels through which the aspirations of every succeeding generation of men have poured themselves out in ever increasing volume.

Although the psalmist complains that the Jews in their captivity could no longer sing the songs of Zion, Jehovah's songs, yet as a matter of history their songs did not cease, but were set to a deeper music of contrition and trust in God.

This music sounded out its plaintive notes from every Jewish colony where a public altar of worship was set up, and witnessed to an undying hope in God that He would yet visit His people with a great deliverance. This hope was realized in the coming of the Messiah to set up His kingdom in the earth, and angel voices announced to men the great event with the song of "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men in whom He is well pleased." The New Testament Scriptures abound in proof that as the Apostolic church slowly apprehended the profound meaning of the redemptive work of Christ, the fires of new love and devotion kindled into songs of thanksgiving and praise for what God had wrought, songs which were destined to increase in volume with the growth of the new spiritual kingdom in the earth. If the saying is not quite true that "the Incarnation gave birth to song, "it is true that the Incarnation gave a new quality to the song of devout hearts. God had come nigh to men in the person of His Son and in the work of His Spirit, and this sense of nearness and of vital fellowship with the very heart of God found expression in the songs of the Christian church. Our Saviour, already in the shadow of the cross, sang with His disciples a song at the close of the Last Supper, thus witnessing to His assurance of victory in the conflict just before Him. midnight His persecuted but triumphant apostles, Paul and Silas, "prayed and sang praises to God." The Roman historian, Pliny, characterised the primitive Christians as those who sang hymns to the praise of Christ. In the fourth century Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, adapted Greek music to the use of the church. This work was greatly surpassed in the sixth century by Gregory the Great, who established schools for musical education in Rome, to which he gave personal supervision. Gregory made effort to kindle the spirit of song in the hearts of the people, but in this he met with only temporary success. The masses of the people were too ignorant, with too imperfectly developed spiritual sensibilities, to respond to the profounder religious feelings that are the springs of sacred song. For a thousand years music was in the hands of choirs of priests, and hymns and chants were in the Latin language.

At

Worship came to be more and more formal, an appeal to the eye and ear, or, at best, to the emotional life rather than to the deeper religious life, and it was only from the secret cloisters of monks and nuns, who had hidden themselves from an evil world, that the profounder aspirations for fellowship with God found subdued expression in sacred hymns and songs. But even in those decadent times the voice of public music could not be wholly suppressed. The Flagellants sang as they marched from place to place; their rods of self-chastisement falling with rythmic stroke upon their lacerated flesh. The Lollards of England and the Hussites of Bohemia, with their new personal appropriation of the redemptive grace of Christ, broke out in public songs of praise and thanksgiving.

But the vast expansion in church hymnology and appropriate vocal and instrumental music had its source in the Protestant Reformation, and compared with its rich religious and poetic thought, its height and depth of musical expression, all previous poetry-if we except a few inspired productions— including of course the inimitable sacred Psalms and all music employed in public worship, was but preparatory and experimental. The great Reformation burst upon the world, not indeed without a period of preparation, but it swept the hearts of men like a mighty tidal wave of spiritual power, and voices were multiplied in ever widening circles with songs of praise for the great things which God had wrought. These hymns, while wide in their range of thought and feeling, breathed a spirit in deep contrast with the hymns of the pre-Reformation. The minor music of contrition and fear, of searching after God with unsatisfied longing, was changed into major music of victory and unwavering trust in God. Luther himself was not only the greatest preacher of the German reformation, but also the greatest singer. His hymn, "A mighty stronghold is our God," was "the triumphant trumpet-blast of the Reformation." It was the poetic embodiment of the spirit of Luther and of the Reformation which he set in motion. These new hymns of joy and hope in a full and free salvation were carried by travelling singers from village to village and sung into the hearts of the German people. So great was the effect of these hymns that it was said by one of the enemies of the Reformation that "the hymns of Luther had destroyed more souls than his writings and sermons"! Even down to the present day Germany has continued to be a prolific source of sacred hymns and music, and when

winnowed of its less valuable products there remains a noble collection of hymns and appropriate music that are the rich inheritance of the church of Christ in all lands.

Next to Germany sacred hymns and music have made their largest development in England, and the stages in this development have always corresponded with the stages in the growth of the life of the church. In times of religious decay the fires of devotion and of holy aspiration smouldered to the point of extinction, and voices of praise, of thanksgiving and adoration sank into silence; but when new springs of spiritual life were set flowing, or old ones were quickened into new activity, the church again became vocal with the glad music of sacred song. Watt's, out of a rich emotional life and of a broad, catholic spirit, poured forth many hundreds of sacred hymns, not a few of which remain to the present day as cherished treasures of English devotion. "There is a land of pure delight;" "Jesus shall reign where 'er the son; ""When I survey the wondrous cross; "O God, our help in ages past." John Wesley and Whitfield were instruments selected and prepared by God to awaken a cold and secular church to a new spiritual life, and the new enthusiasm of consecration to the Divine service needed new songs of trust and victory and hope. While there were many contributions to this need, the songs of Charles Wesley were first in order of importance, and among them there are many that the church will not permit to fall into forgetfulness. "Thou God of glorious majesty;" "Love Divine all love excelling; "Jesus lover of my soul." The list of singers of sacred song which the English church has produced during the two centuries now closed, is a long and noble list, giving in its quality and its abundance proof of the pervasive life of the Spirit and of the deepening and broadening of the channels of worship in the hearts of men.

American hymnology and sacred music falls much behind that of the mother country in the quality and abundance of its output, largely because of the richness of the supply furnished at hand, but while its sacred hymns and music are mostly the gift of the English church, or of the German church through English translations, the contributions of native singers have been numerous and not a few of a high order of poetical and spiritual worth. Their value to the church has, perhaps, been out of proportion to their intrinsic worth since they were the product of the religious and social life of the people and