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sanctified by the Wesleyan Hymn-book, than by all the decrees of councils or the whole "corpus patrum.'

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No doubt there are dangers. There are sentimental hymns; but it should also be remembered that there is a sentimental singing of psalms. In that wonderfully subtle and severe self-analysis, the "Confessions of Augustine," we read: "Sometimes I seem to myself to attach too much value to music, since I observe that the flame of devotion is kindled in our minds by sacred words sung more readily than by the same words spoken. But this pleasing delectation, to which the mind ought not to yield so as to be enervated, often beguiles me, whilst the sense does not wait upon reason as a patient follower, but tries to guide and outrun her. At other times, guarding against this snare, I err in excessive strictness, and am ready to shut out from my own and the church's ears the exquisite melodies in which the Psalms of David are conveyed. To me it seems safer what I remember Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, often told me, that he made the reader give the psalm with so slight an inflexion of the voice, that it was more like speaking than singing (qui tam modico flexu vocis faciebat sonare lectorem pзalmi, ut pronuntianti vicinior esset quàm canenti). Yet when I remember my own tears under the church's psalmody in the first days of my recovered faith, and consider how now, when the music is good, I am more affected by the thought than by the tune, I again acknowledge the great benefit of this institution."* In view of the whole case he gives a hesitating verdict (non quidem irretractabilem sententiam) in favour of church music or congregational singing (cantandi consuetudinem in Ecclesia). But surely there is no need to be so hampered as the good bishop of Hippo. He who planted the ear gave also the gift of music; and can it be better used than in extolling the gracious Giver? Nor, with all our admiration for Augustine, the transcendent theological intellect, can we accept as the true practice of piety, the constant and jealous self-scrutiny revealed in these Confessions. A man may sit all his life in a pair of scales, and when he sees the other side going down may restore the equipoise with a few ounces of food, or contrariwise may fast till the pampered flesh give in, and restore the balance; but we have more respect for the day-labourer who gives out his vigour in honest trenching and delving, and then recruits it with a wholesome meal and a half-hour's nap on the softest plank, than for the hypochondriac in his nightcap inside the screen watching the thermometer, and with tear and wear on the one side and morsels of toast on the other

*Augustini Confessionum liber x. cap. 33.

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maintaining the perpetual see-saw. And the Christian has received life from on high for some other purpose than simply to watch it: he has got it to use. Nor is that highest life destructive of every other. It may leave the poet and the minstrel, whilst it creates the saint; and even if a man should not be this last, it is better to be either of the other two, than remain the mere animal or the mere automaton. Therefore we are not much disturbed by the frequent caveats against sensuous music and sentimental hymns. If our neighbour is making a joyful noise unto the Lord, or singing with a loud voice skilfully, we shall not stop him to ask if he is "really regenerate "; and if we see a tear on an honest face, we shall not analyze it, so as to set down in decimals the proportion of natural emotion which mingles with the godly sorrow.

On the other hand, those who are the opponents of instrumental music in worship should advocate hymns. As a friend writes, "When in our own congregation a psalm of David is sung, I feel extremely the need of some royal harp or mighty organ to weld into a measure of unity those many and oft discordant voices, which are supposed to utter 'grave sweet melody.' Heartily as I endorse the sentiment that David's Psalms must ever be the standard praises of the church, I believe they should, as David evidently wished, be sung or chaunted with a grand accompaniment of instrumental music, so as to give life to their vast conceptions, and raise once more on high their lofty adoration. On the other hand, the want of those beggarly elements, the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, is scarcely felt when a hymn of simple devotion is sung, and when the name of Jesus is inspiring every breast with the Christian graces of faith, hope, and charity." This is perfectly true. For sundry reasons we have opposed instrumental music in our Presbyterian churches; but if we want the Psalms in their pristine perfection, it must be confessed that some of them should not only be sung, but that the singing should be sustained by the most powerful accompaniments; and any one who has heard a slow precentor calling on a silent congregation,

"Praise Him with trumpets' sound; His praise
With psaltery advance,"

or psalms like the 47th and 95th, with their swift sequences, cumulative and crushing towards the close, going off like minute guns, with long stops at the end of each stanza; or psalms with choruses like the 107th, or antiphonies like the 24th, the 118th, the 136th, swept pell-mell along, without the least distinction between the portions designed for a single voice and those for the whole congregation; to say nothing

of passages which should be soft and subdued thundered forth with all the might of exulting trebles and bassooning baritones, as when, by way of climax to the 95th Psalm, the seated minstrels throw back their heads, and shout,

"O come and let us worship Him,

Let us bow down withal,

And on our knees before the Lord,
Our Maker, let us fall,"

and then,-"Let us pray,"-jump up, and stand staring round them for the next twenty minutes; whether or not he may deem this the absolute optimism, or only bear with it as needful during the present distress, and whether or not psalteries and sackbuts would mend the matter, a candid observer will scarcely maintain that this is exactly the way it was done in the days of King David. But just because it is modern and indigenous, a hymn takes care of itself. It needs no Lowth nor Herder to explain its structure, and point out the changes of person, and the consequent need for a change of parts in the music; nor does it need any mighty and over-mastering instrument to command the singers, accelerating or retarding the movements, and with bursts of melody filling up each aching void in the harmony.

Ourselves, tenacious of old usage, and uneasy when changes are talked of, as long as we can remember we have coveted an enlargement of our Christian psalmody; and we now record our deep and solemn conviction, that the church which excludes from its praises that evangelical element which these latter days have so largely supplied, is not only needlessly excluding a large element of life and power, but we do not see how such a community can long remain the church of the people. Pending negotiations for union, it may not be prudent to multiply collections, all of which may shortly be merged in some conjoint hymn-book, more select or more comprehensive than those at present existing; but surely it is not wise to ignore the great and growing desire for such additional aids to devotion which exists among the laity, and which, if the result of a revived and more thoroughly Christian piety, ought to be hailed with gratitude, and which, although it were the mere consequence of advancing culture, ought not to be treated with contempt. In church music there is already a wide-spread improvement; but this of itself will soon necessitate an expanded psalmody. Music is not, like the Scotch and English Psalms, confined to three metres; and of the Psalms themselves, there are now versions by Watts, Montgomery, and Lyte, which, without superseding the time-hallowed Rous and Brady, would offer an agreeable alternative. But there are also "new songs," which have sprung from the very depths

Donaldson on the Apostolical Fathers.

369

of Christian experience, as well as from the very necessities. of the Christian church, within these last generations, and which, more truly than sermons or theological treatises, are the cardiphonia of modern Christianity. Whispered in the sick-room, and murmured in the silent shade, sung at the family altar, and lifted up in clear joyful strains by youthful voices in the Sabbath school, the atmosphere is full of them, and, right or wrong, those who use them have come to believe that they are full of Christ. Nor is it well that, going from their prayer-meeting or their home into the house of God, they should feel as if they had come into a colder clime, with a more formal and far-off communion. Even a Quaker meeting, with no song at all, or a Hebrew synagogue, with nothing but the song of Moses and the Psalms, is better than no worship whatever; but those in whom the word of Christ dwells richly, will naturally speak to one another in psalms and hymns in which the name of Jesus sounds. J. H.

ART. VIII.-Donaldson on the Apostolical Fathers.

A Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine, from the Death of the Apostles to the Nicene Council. By JAMES DONALDSON, M.A. Vol. I., "The Apostolical Fathers." London. 1864.

E

We have before us the first volume of a work which pro

mises to be of considerable interest, although we suspect that its author greatly over-estimates its importance. It is unquestionably desirable that the patristic writings should be studied more than they are, and consequently that all possible facilities should be provided for their study; but it appears to us that, in order that this study may have its full value, it must be conducted by careful perusal, either of the originals, or of faithful and accurate translations. Now, to theologians generally, the originals of the fathers are sufficiently accessible; while others can acquire a fair knowledge of their principal works through the medium of existing translations. To our thinking, there are but few of the purposes which the study of ancient Christian literature is fitted to serve, that cannot be better accomplished otherwise than by the means which Mr Donaldson proposes to furnish, and of which he gives us a specimen in the volume before us. Still there may be good ends served by such a work ;-one we thankfully acknowledge, that it has set us to the reading of treatises to which we have for a long time been strangers, and it is therefore worth while to examine the volume before us at some length.

Mr Donaldson's plan is to discuss fully the claims of all

the reputed writings of the ante-Nicene fathers to be accounted genuine, to give a brief abstract of their contents, and to state the particulars of their teaching on the most important theological topics. In the volume now issued, he thus handles the works of the so-called apostolical fathers, admitting, to a certain extent, the claims of the first epistle of Clement, the epistle of Barnabas, the epistle of Polycarp, the Pastor of Hermas, and the fragments of Papias, to be regarded as the productions of men who lived in or shortly after the times of the apostles. Other writings which have been reputed to belong to that period he rejects, handing them over for consideration to a subsequent volume. With respect to some of these writings, we shall have occasion to speak before we have done; but, in the mean time, we must enter a protest in limine against our author's mode of proceeding with respect to them. In the present volume, which professes to give an account of the apostolic fathers, we were surely entitled to expect to be furnished with reasons for the rejection of certain writings, as well as for the acceptance of others; but no such reasons does our author give us, except with reference to the Martyrdom of Polycarp. No doubt some time hence Mr Donaldson will give us his reasons for believing that these writings belong to some later period, but we ought to have had the negative side of the argument now, and to have been put in a position to judge of the propriety of rejecting them from this period. And this claim is greatly strengthened by the fact that our author founds an argument, which he repeats again and again, and which is in fact the main terminus ad quem of his book, as to the indefiniteness of the early patristic theology, upon the assumption that the writings which he examines constitute the whole body of apostolico-patristic literature. Now, it may be so, and in time our author may shew that it is so; but in the mean time he asks us to accept a conclusion, and that not of minor importance, but one which it appears to be the main object of his work to establish, without furnishing us with any notion of the grounds on which it is founded. The conclusion that certain doctrines are not taught in any of the writings of the apostolic fathers, manifestly required as one of its premises, that certain writings constitute the whole of this class, and no one can accept as a substitute for this the very different proposition, that certain writings belong to this class. Yet it is the latter proposition alone with which our author occupies himself. To have discussed the claims of such works as the second epistle of Clement, the epistle to Diognetus, and the epistles of Ignatius, needed not have made his volume unreasonably large, while it would have given it a value which it does not

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