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Ꮲ Ꭺ Ꭱ Ꭲ 1 Ꮩ.

MUSIC OF THE CHURCH.

PART IV.

CHAPTER I.

PSALMODY AND PSALMISTS.

General observations on psalmody, its importance-many poor psalms and hymns in use—the greatest poets not always the best hymn writers—the hymnic capabilities of Cowley, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, Burns and Bloomfield referred tonotices of the psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins, Brady and Tate, Addison, Doddridge, Bishop Kenn, Hart, Beddome, Toplady, Olivers, and Rhodes.

In a work professing to treat on the music of the church, it will not be thought irrelevant to add a chapter, to consider the character of the hymns to which it is united. If the opinion be correct, that national ballads have a powerful influence in perpetuating the manners and customs, and in preserving the lineaments and freshness of the original character of the country, which has given them birth, and which is their theme; Christian psalmody must be considered equally effective, not only by preserving the expositions of Divine truth

clear, entire, and steady, but also by bringing them constantly before all classes of the community.

And when we call to mind the quantity of hymns now in use, original and select, sectionized for every department of Divine worship, and every stage of religious education, in volumes of every variety of size,-it must be admitted that we of the present day, have very much the advantage of those who lived in the more early ages of the Christian church. So large a number of hymns, which, in some form or other, and by as many various means, find their way into Christian and ungodly dwellings, cannot but erect innumerable and formidable checks to the progress of vice, and minister essentially to the life of individual and family devotion. For, there is scarcely a scriptural doctrine and duty; a promise of the Holy Spirit; a tone of religious feeling, from the enraptured soarings of the apostle Paul in the third heavens, to the inexpressible anguish of the poverty-stricken Job on the dunghill, which a hymn may not be found to illustrate and apply.

And, their use is equally observable within the important sphere of ministerial labour. Materials so excellent, as a proper selection of hymns, put into the hands of a preacher, if he be a "workman that needeth not to be ashamed," will give him powerful aid in "doing the work of an evangelist." How often, when an appropriate hymn has followed the sermon, has the attention of the congregation

been recalled to its several parts, in a pointed, unexpected, and yet in an agreeable manner; and the gracious feeling just created, received further nourishment.

But of the hymns now in use, as well as of those of former times, there are great numbers that have no legitimate claims to the honour to which we have alluded. In conveying this censure, it is not on account of their being defective compositions, in the classification, and as that peculiar kind of poetry that would allow them critically to be denominated hymns, for on that point we are not just now speaking, but in the broad and popular sense, as poetic effusions. There may be all the limbs and parts of rhyme, quantity, and accent, to give the verse a poetic form, and the symmetry may be highly wrought out, and amply charged with the application of scripture truth, and yet there may be nothing of the breath and soul of poetry. But there are hymns which have not this excellence, humble as it is: they have not the merit even of being clever counterfeits. In the absence of poetic genius, the plain sense of the subject, is often inverted, cramped, or inflated, atperhaps the mere suggestion of a rhyme, or for the purpose of introducing a singular and ridiculous figure. Thus the order of composition is inverted; the sense is compressed or extended, given in part, or as a whole, in order to fit the verse; and the instruction thereby professed to be given is worse

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