DANIEL DOVE'S ARRIVAL AT DONCASTER. THE ORGAN IN ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH.
THE PULPIT. MRS. NEALE'S BENEFACTION.
_Non ulla Musis pagina gratior
Quam quæ severis ludicra jungere
Novit, fatigatamque nugis
Utilibus recreare mentem._
DR. JOHNSON.
It was in the Mayoralty of Thomas Pheasant (as has already been said)
and in the year of our Lord 1739, that Daniel Dove the younger, having
then entered upon his seventeenth year, first entered the town of
Doncaster and was there delivered by his excellent father to the care
of Peter Hopkins. They loved each other so dearly, that this, which
was the first day of their separation, was to both the unhappiest of
their lives.
The great frost commenced in the winter of that year; and with the
many longing lingering thoughts which Daniel cast towards his home, a
wish was mingled that he could see the frozen waterfall in Weathercote
Cave.
It was a remarkable era in Doncaster also, because the Organ was that
year erected, at the cost of five hundred guineas, raised by voluntary
subscription among the parishioners. Harris and Byfield were the
builders, and it is still esteemed one of the best in the kingdom.
When it was opened, the then curate, Mr. Fawkes, preached a sermon for
the occasion, in which after having rhetorized in praise of sacred
music, and touched upon the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery,
dulcimer and all kinds of instruments, he turned to the organ and
apostrophized it thus;—“But O what—O what—what shall I call _thee_ by?
thou divine Box of sounds!”
That right old worthy Francis Quarles of quaint memory,—and the more
to be remembered for his quaintness,—knew how to _improve_ an organ
somewhat better than Mr. Fawkes. His poem upon one is the first in his
Divine Fancies, and whether he would have it ranked among Epigrams,
Meditations, or Observations, perhaps he could not himself tell. The
Reader may class it as he pleases.
Observe this Organ: mark but how it goes!
'Tis not the hand alone of him that blows
The unseen bellows, nor the hand that plays
Upon the apparent note-dividing keys,
That makes these well-composed airs appear
Before the high tribunal of thine ear.
They both concur; each acts his several part;
The one gives it breath, the other lends it art.
Man is this Organ; to whose every action
Heaven gives a breath, (a breath without coaction,)
Without which blast we cannot act at all;
Without which Breath the Universe must fall
To the first nothing it was made of—seeing
In Him we live, we move, we have our being.
Thus filled with His diviner breath, and back't
With His first power, we touch the keys and act:
He blows the bellows: as we thrive in skill,
Our actions prove, like music, good or ill.
The question whether instrumental music may lawfully be introduced
into the worship of God in the Churches of the New Testament, has been
considered by Cotton Mather and answered to his own satisfaction and
that of his contemporary countrymen and their fellow puritans, in his
“Historical Remarks upon the discipline practised in the Churches of
New England.”—“The Instrumental Music used in the old Church of
Israel,” he says, “was an Institution of God; it was the Commandment
of the Lord by the Prophets; and the Instruments are called God's
Instruments, and Instruments of the Lord. Now there is not one word of
Institution in the New Testament for Instrumental Music in the Worship
of God. And because the holy God rejects all he does not command in
his worship, he now therefore in effect says to us, _I will not hear
the melody of thy Organs_. But on the other hand the rule given doth
abundantly intimate that no voice is now heard in the Church but what
is significant, and edifying by signification; which the voice of
Instruments is not.”
Worse logic than this and weaker reasoning no one would wish to meet
with in the controversial writings of a writer from whose opinions he
differs most widely. The Remarks form part of that extraordinary and
highly interesting work the _Magnalia Christi Americana_. Cotton
Mather is such an author as Fuller would have been if the old English
Worthy, instead of having been from a child trained up in the way he
should go, had been calvinisticated till the milk of human kindness
with which his heart was always ready to overflow had turned sour.
“Though Instrumental Music,” he proceeds to say, “were admitted and
appointed in the worship of God under the Old Testament, yet we do not
find it practised in the Synagogue of the Jews, but only in the
Temple. It thence appears to have been a part of the ceremonial
Pedagogy which is now abolished; nor can any say it was a part of
moral worship. And whereas the common usage now hath confined
Instrumental Music to Cathedrals, it seems therein too much to
Judaize,—which to do is a part of the Anti-Christian Apostacy,—as well
as to Paganize.—If we admit Instrumental Music in the worship of God,
how can we resist the imposition of all the instruments used among the
ancient Jews? Yea, Dancing as well as playing, and several other
Judaic actions?”
During the short but active reign of the Puritans in England, they
acted upon this preposterous opinion, and sold the Church organs,
without being scrupulous concerning the uses to which they might be
applied. A writer of that age, speaking of the prevalence of
drunkenness, as a national vice, says, “that nothing may be wanting to
the height of luxury and impiety of this abomination, they have
translated the organs out of the Churches to set them up in taverns,
chaunting their dithyrambics and bestial bacchanalias to the tune of
those instruments which were wont to assist them in the celebration of
God's praises, and regulate the voices of the worst singers in the
world,—which are the English in their churches at present.”
It cannot be supposed that the Organs which were thus disposed of,
were instruments of any great cost or value. An old pair of Organs,
(for that was the customary mode of expression, meaning a set,—and in
like manner a pair of cards, for a pack;)—an old pair of this kind
belonging to Lambeth Church was sold in 1565 for £1. 10_s._ Church
Organs therefore, even if they had not been at a revolutionary price,
would be within the purchase of an ordinary vintner. “In country
parish Churches,” says Mr. Denne the Antiquary, “even where the
district was small, there was often a choir of singers, for whom
forms, desks and books were provided; and they probably most of them
had benefactors who supplied them with a pair of organs that might
more properly have been termed a box of whistles. To the best of my
recollection there were in the chapels of some of the Colleges in
Cambridge very, very, indifferent instruments. That of the chapel
belonging to our old house was removed before I was admitted.”
The use of the organ has occasioned a great commotion, if not a
schism, among the methodists of late. Yet our holy Herbert could call
Church music the “sweetest of sweets;” and describe himself when
listening to it, as disengaged from the body, and “rising and falling
with its wings.”
Harris, the chief builder of the Doncaster Organ, was a contemporary
and rival of Father Smith, famous among Organists. Each built one for
the Temple Church, and Father Smith's had most votes in its favor. The
peculiarity of the Doncaster Organ, which was Harris's masterpiece,
is, its having, in the great organ, two trumpets and a clarion,
throughout the whole compass; and these stops are so excellent, that a
celebrated musician said every pipe in them was worth its weight in
silver.
Our Doctor dated from that year, in his own recollections, as the
great era of his life. It served also for many of the Doncastrians, as
a date to which they carried back their computations, till the
generation which remembered the erecting of the organ was extinct.
This was the age of Church improvement in Doncaster,—meaning here by
Church, the material structure. Just thirty years before, the Church
had been beautified and the ceiling painted, too probably to the
disfigurement of works of a better architectural age. In 1721 the old
peal of five bells was replaced with eight new ones, of new metal,
heretofore spoken of. In 1723 the church floor and church yard, which
had both been unlevelled by Death's levelling course, were levelled
anew, and new rails were placed to the altar. Two years later the
Corporation gave the new Clock, and it was fixed to strike on the
watch bell,—that clock which numbered the hours of Daniel Dove's life
from the age of seventeen till that of seventy. In 1736 the west
gallery was put up, and in 1741, ten years after the organ, a new
pulpit, but not in the old style; for pulpits which are among the
finest works of art in Brabant and Flanders, had degenerated in
England, and in other protestant countries.
This probably was owing, in our own country, as much to the prevalence
of puritanism, as to the general depravation of taste. It was for
their beauty or their splendour that the early Quakers inveighed with
such vehemence against pulpits, “many of which places,” saith George
Keith in his quaking days, “as we see in England and many other
countries, have a great deal of superfluity, and vain and superfluous
labour and pains of carving, painting and varnishing upon them,
together with your cloth and velvet cushion in many places; because of
which, and not for the height of them above the ground, we call them
Chief Places. But as for a commodious place above the ground whereon
to stand when one doth speak in an assembly, it was never condemned by
our friends, who also have places whereupon to stand, when to
minister, as they had under the Law.”
In 1743 a marble Communion Table was placed in the Church,
and—(passing forward more rapidly than the regular march of this
narration, in order to present these ecclesiastical matters without
interruption,)—a set of chimes were fixed in 1754—merry be the memory
of those by whom this good work was effected! The north and south
galleries were re-built in 1765; and in 1767 the church was
white-washed, a new reading desk put up, the pulpit removed to what
was deemed a more convenient station, and Mrs. Neale gave a velvet
embroidered cover and cushion for it,—for which her name is enrolled
among the benefactors of St. George's Church.
That velvet which, when I remember it, had lost the bloom of its
complexion, will hardly have been preserved till now even by the
dyer's renovating aid: and its embroidery has long since passed
through the goldsmith's crucible. _Sic transit_ excites a more
melancholy feeling in me when a recollection like this arises in my
mind, than even the “forlorn _hic jacet_” of a neglected tombstone.
Indeed such is the softening effect of time upon those who have not
been rendered obdurate and insensible by the world and the world's
law, that I do not now call to mind without some emotion even that
pulpit, to which I certainly bore no good will in early life, when it
was my fortune to hear from it so many somniferous discourses; and to
bear away from it, upon pain of displeasure in those whose displeasure
to me was painful, so many texts, chapter and verse, few or none of
which had been improved to my advantage. “Public sermons”—(hear! hear!
for Martin Luther speaketh!) “public sermons do very little edify
children, who observe and learn but little thereby. It is more needful
that they be taught and well instructed with diligence in schools; and
at home that they be orderly heard and examined in what they have
learned. This way profiteth much; it is indeed very wearisome, but it
is very necessary.” May I not then confess that no turn of expression
however felicitous,—no collocation of words however emphatic and
beautiful—no other sentences whatsoever, although rounded, or pointed
for effect with the most consummate skill, have ever given me so much
delight, as those dear phrases which are employed in winding up a
sermon, when it is brought to its long-wished-for close.
It is not always, nor necessarily thus; nor ever would be so if these
things were ordered as they might and ought to be. Hugh Latimer,
Bishop Taylor, Robert South, John Wesley, Robert Hall, Bishop Jebb,
Bishop Heber, Christopher Benson, your hearers felt no such tedium!
when you reached that period it was to them like the cessation of a
strain of music, which while it lasted had rendered them insensible to
the lapse of time.
“I would not,” said Luther, “have preachers torment their hearers and
detain them with long and tedious preaching.”