She has her ornaments, but they are the living sapphire and imperial diamond; she has her habiliments, but they are like the graceful and flowing robes of the Roman matron. Thus arrayed, she moves forward with unconscious dignity, as though born to empire. No plebeian wonder at her own elevation disturbs the serenity of her noble brow. She does not merely please the ear and charm the fancy-a greater power is hers— to subdue and win the soul.

A second characteristic of sacred music should be dignity.

Her themes are the noblest. She leaves to others the loves and the hates, the joys and the sorrows, the conflicts and the victories of this transient life. Time is too fleeting and the world too perishing for her. She sings of the history and destiny of the soul, of the favor of God once lost by man and restored at infinite cost, of unseen angels guarding his wandering steps, of immortality in a world of light. Her songs are those of "Kings in exile" who sometimes catch glimpses of their native realms from some land of Beulah, and then hurry fearlessly onward with music through the intricate mazes and cold river that lie in their path.

With such themes, how can she ever be trivial? How can she stoop from her high vocation to cater for the low tastes of the multitude? And yet she has done so. Not satisfied with converting our temples of worship into election hustings, the

popular taste has laid its sacrilegious hands upon the "songs of the temple"

"Contactuque omnia foedant immundo."

Six days are not sufficient on which to sing Auld Lang Syne, Sweet Home, Bounding Billows and Bonnie Doon. The public taste requires their repetition on the seventh, and so imperious a mandate must be obeyed. Even the national anthem of England is no longer heard with dismay by our republican ears. Its position in a popular collection of church music, and the name of America which it now bears, have divested it of its former terrors, and shuddering patriots do not look up with consternation at the sound of "God save the King." A remedy is often found for such vagaries, by insisting upon consistency in all their particular. No better exposure of their absurdity can be made. It might not be amiss to suggest to those who would introduce into church music, martial airs and sentimental ballads, the use of their appropriate instruments; for even now they call up to the mind the sound of the drum and fife, or the Pandean pipes and barrel organ of the wandering minstrel.

But sacred music has not been reduced to such extremities that it need go forth to the highways for its materials, or pillage the wandering musician of his favorite and well worn tunes. The Past and the Present have their rich stores which they offer with lavish hand, and which the Future "may

3

And here religion may

not willingly let die." choose the fairest, the goodliest. Under the ceremonial law, none but a perfect, unblemished offering might be made. Those types have been realized; those shadows have passed away, but their spirit remains, and when we of our abundance may make an acceptable, a worthy offering, let us not seek the feeble, the sickly, the lame; rather let us still offer the 'firstlings of the flock, the finest of the wheat and the oil.'

Another circumstance by which sacred music loses much of its dignity, is the rapid movement in which it is often performed. It has no appointed task which it must hasten to accomplish; no exacting task-master to chide and scourge its lingering steps. We live but a span of time, and the world around demands our unceasing toils, but the "King of Kings" will not chide us while we linger in his presence, and sing his praises with thoughtful, earnest reverence. Those who hurry onward with such flying haste, may excite our wonder by the skill of their execution, but they will only bewilder and confuse the mind; they leave far behind the devotional feelings unsympathizing and unmoved.

Far different is it when music lays aside all undignified and unseemly haste-her motions are not then like the fretful torrent chafing and tossing along its brawling course, but rather like the waves of the ocean which gather majesty and strength as they roll slowly onward.

Whatever advantage the performances of a select and skilful choir possess over the singing of a congregation in other respects, in point of dignity and majesty, they fall far short. The day

may come, and though a distant, it will be an auspicious one for music, when its science and its art shall be so understood, that the voices of the great congregation shall rise as that of one man. Even now, when some well known air is sung by a mighty assembly, how powerfully are our feelings impressed. We seem to hear a voice rising like that of "many waters." for the sea of glass and the elders, the immortal river and the tree of life on its banks and though the new heavens with all their wonders are not revealed to our eyes, yet whether we are in the body, or out of the body, we can hardly tell.

We look about us four and twenty

Sacred music should also be characterized by variety of expression.

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How tiresome is a dull unvarying monotony. Were the deep blue above never diversified with clouds or stars, we should soon grow weary of ing. Were the surface of the earth one unbroken, unchanging green, it would be far less beautiful than now. Such is the analogy of all nature. endless variety is hers. Thus is it too in art. The painter uses not a single color, nor delights in the multiplied repetition of a single figure, however beautiful it may be. The sculptor, though more restricted in the execution of his designs, aims to

condense in a single group, a long history of action or passion. How dull are the words of a lifeless speaker. A soporific more powerful than morphine are they.

"Sacpe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro."

So in music-the sweetest chords when prolonged grow tiresome. They are

"A slumberous sound-a sound that brings

The feelings of a dream."

We listen impatiently for a change, and even a discord is a pleasant relief. This is true of music in its lowest sense, when uttering no articulate or intelligent language. But when "married to immortal verse," expression becomes to it what gesture and emphasis are to oratory. It is no servile, mechanical adherence to the "key of expression" with which the books of psalmody in use are garnished, that I mean. The immortal soul has in its own emotions a better guide than numerical figures, or the letters of the alphabet. When singing the words of Addison, Doddridge, Watts, Cowper and Montgomery, we need not be told by the "key of expression" that the letter a means very soft, u very loud, that the letter d is variously distinctive. Let us sympathize with the feelings which inspired those devout spirits, and we cannot mistake.

What has given celebrity to the famous vocalists of the world? Is it the volume of their voice