[By way of an appropriate pendent to our Correspondent's
paper, we quote the following excellent passage on Psalmody,
by the Rev. W.S. Gilly, in his _Memoir of Felix Neff_.]
The effect produced by the words, or by the music, or by the
combination of the two, is such, that the cultivation of psalmody has
ever been earnestly recommended by those who are anxious to excite
true piety. Tradition, history, revelation, and experience, bear
witness to the truth, that there is nothing to which the natural
feelings of man respond more readily. Every nation, whose literary
remains have come down to us, appears to have consecrated the first
efforts of its muse to religion, or rather all the first compositions
in verse seem to have grown out of devotional effusions. We know that
the book of Job, and others, the most ancient of the Old Testament,
contain rhythmical addresses to the Supreme Being. Many of the psalms
were composed centuries before the time of king David, and it is not
extravagant to imagine, that some of them may have been sung even to
Jubal's lyre, and were handed down from patriarch to patriarch by oral
tradition. Nor did the fancy of Milton take too bold a flight when
it pleased itself with the idea that our first parents, taught by
the carols of the birds in the garden of Eden, raised their voices in
tuneful notes of praise to the Creator of all, when they walked forth
in the cool of the day to meet their God before the fall. But this is
certain, that one of our Lord's last acts of social worship on earth
was to sing a hymn with his disciples. Few, therefore, can be slow to
understand, that if Christ and his disciples broke forth in holy song,
immediately after the solemnities of the Last Supper, and just before
the Shepherd was smitten, and the sheep were scattered; and if Paul
and Silas sung praises unto God in their prison-house, congregational
worship may always be the better for such helps. Add to these
examples, the apostolical exhortation to the merry hearted to sing
psalms, and the apostolical descriptions of the choral strains which
resound in the courts of heaven, and we cannot but feel certain, that
the services of the Christian church were cheered from the earliest
times by hymns and psalms. "Those Nazarenes sing hymns to Christ,"
said Pliny, in contempt. We thank him for recording the fact. The
words of the Te Deum were composed by a native of Gaul, (for the use
probably of one of the churches on the Rhone, or of the Alps) about
the third century; and at the same period, men, women, youths of both
sexes, and even children joined in the psalmody of the sanctuaries,
in such cordial and harmonious unison, that a father of the church has
well compared the sound to the loud, but not discordant, noise of many
waves beating against the sea shore.
At the time of the Reformation, sacred music, which had begun to
run wild, was brought back to its first principles. The melodies of
religious worship were rendered more heart-touching, by being set to
words in the vernacular tongues, which every body could understand.
Luther's hymn, "Great God, what do I hear and see," led the way. Henry
VIII. hated the German reformer, and all that he did, but he burned to
rival him in every thing, and he gave a stimulus to the public taste,
by composing words and music for the service of the English church.
In France, soon after the middle of the sixteenth century, when it was
doubtful whether the nation would become Protestant or remain Roman
Catholic, the pathetic tunes and devotional stanzas of the reformers
obtained so great an influence over the minds of men, that the
music of the temples, as the Protestant sanctuaries were called,
to distinguish them from the Roman Catholic churches, became the
fashionable melodies of the day. This taste found its way even to
the court, and to the great alarm of the Romish party, some of the
sweetest and most stirring of the psalms, which had been translated
into French metre by Clement Marot, were set to music by Lewis
Guadimel, and were constantly in the mouths not only of the Protestant
families of the provinces, but of the ornaments of the saloons of
Paris, and of the palace of the Louvre. It is said to have been quite
astonishing how much this pious and simple device found favour for
the Protestant cause, and induced people, who had never read Scripture
before, to search the holy volume out of which those treasures were
drawn, which so charmed their ears and their imagination. It is still
the practice in most of the mountain churches to make sacred music a
part of family devotion, and many of the tunes which Guadimel composed
with such success are still sung to the praise of God. I can bear
witness to the forcible manner in which these strains, rising to
heaven from the lips of parents, children and domestics, quicken
piety, and stir up the best affections of the heart towards God and
man. I have seen and felt the effect produced by them in the humble
dwelling of the village pastor, where none but human voices swelled
the notes; and in the chateau, where the harp and the organ have
mingled their fine sounds with the well modulated tones of an
accomplished family of sons and daughters. My thoughts, at the moment
I am writing this, are at Chateâu Blonay, but most of the voices,
which I heard there, are now silent in death! I am thoroughly
convinced that family worship, and congregational worship lose a great
auxiliary to piety, when there is not the power or the inclination to
join in psalmody.
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