stripped of its inestimable worth; for it subsides into one of the common deaths of all men, though it was that of the Son of God. There is no wrath of God upon Him, no pressure of the weight of a world's iniquities. And why, on this system, was He forsaken by the Father? All the course of sympathy with man which the Son had travelled along, all the self-denying subjection of Himself to degradation and suffering for the sake of winning man's love and confidence, could not but have been a series of acts most pleasing to the Father; and the love of the Father must in consequence have rested on Him with peculiar complacency and affection and oneness, as He went down lower and lower into the valley of the shadow of weakness and death. From what cause, then, can Mr. Davies draw the sudden desertion of the beloved one, just when one would have looked for the utmost sympathy and support? Whence can he fetch the explanation of those mysterious inward agonies, revealed by those darksome words, and followed by a premature decease? The very phenomena of nature, the earthquake and the darkness, lose half their significance. Gethsemane, too, is no slight difficulty; for why such overwhelming agonies of fear, if no more than an ordinary death on the cruel cross impended over Him?

"To us there seems but one solution of this chain of wonders, the solution advocated by a thousand Christian minds, of high poets, sound divines, and eminent private Christians, whose pages burn with love chastened by adoring awe. Why was it 'a midnight nature shuddered to behold'? Because it was a midnight new from the Creator's frown' because of that enormous load of human guilt that bowed His blessed head.' Any other supposition robs the Divine sufferer of His peculiar glory, tears the heart from Christianity, and takes away the crown and glory from the whole inward experience of the Christian.'

Our limited space forbids us to enter upon the final summary of doctrine. It is sometimes said, that polemics are not polite; but in the present instance it is just the reverse. Mr. Hebert is an able opponent, whether in attack or in defence; yet he has displayed the spirit and bearing of a Christian gentleman. Astute in argument, his is a gentle and loving nature. Strong as are his denunciations of error, his sympathies and his solicitudes on behalf of those who have been misled, are eminently of the school of Christ; and if the victory be his, the glory is Christ's. The result is, that he has produced one of the most experimental treatises which has yet appeared in the course of the present controversy. It is an epitome of the subject, and will make its readers familiar with the leading features of the whole question. The hour is coming when neutrality will be impossible; or, if possible, when it will be itself a crime. Another reformation has to be effected; and the battle must be fought within the church itself.

We can heartily recommend Mr. Hebert's treatise to our readers, but especially to the clergy and to students of divinity.

The doctrine which he so ably advocates, is the soul of the Christian ministry. If, in the deepest sense which can be given to the words, the Saviour did not bear the punishment due to sin, then no atonement has been made; and in the absence of this true and perfect expiation, we are left without a key by which to interpret the contents of the word of God.

LITURGICAL MUSIC.-No. IV.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

SIR, Conversing lately with two professional musicians, one of them observed, that he was a short time since in the cathedral, and that when the anthem was over, a gentleman complained that "that was not the sort of music he had come to hear." "And so," said my professional friend, "people will allow themselves to talk about what they don't understand."

Now, Sir, as this allegation,whether put, as here, in an accusatory form, "they," -or as it is more common in the confessional, “I,"--stands at the very door, foundation, and root of all I have been attempting, and may yet attempt, towards the reformation of our liturgical music; I will even take this little story by way of motto for this present letter, and entreat the serious attention of all your readers to what involves no mere question of constitutional prerogative, but the very sanctities of the place where God's honour dwelleth, and of the exercises in which we are to teach and admonish one another "in psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs."

Of course, I do not intend anything unkind, whether to my worthy friend, or other members of his profession. I have loved art and honoured artists as long as I have loved and honoured anything; and I would be, I trust, the last man in the world to wound, even by inadvertency, any honourable professional feeling. But we must speak the truth when the truth demands it. I am compelled, therefore, to assert, that it may be just the professional, and not the non-professional, who is speaking of what he does not understand.

Strange, then, as it may sound, nothing is more practically clear, than that artists are, in many cases, the least qualified, and not the best, to discern the real objects and ultimate principles of their own art; and for the very simple reason, that they are always of necessity looking from, instead of to, it. This side of the question needs, indeed, but little comment. That those whose whole professional life is devoted to the means, should become entangled, and get to mistake them, more or less, for the end, is in the nature of things. You meet it at every step. It is in all the history of art. It is the obverse side of the medal that demands our present attention. It seems taken for granted, that in order to know if the end be really answered, a

man must first have mastered the means by which that end is to be brought about. Is it possible to conceive a bolder fallacy?

What would be thought of a man being forbidden to say his shoe pinched him, till he had served apprenticeship to Father Crispin ! What of his observing that the church clock had stopped, and being interrupted by "Pardon me, Sir, but are you a watchmaker?" What even of his complaining of a drowsy rambling speech, and a neighbour whispering, "Perhaps, Sir, you have not studied Quin

tilian?"

"Ah! but it requires only the natural possession of a foot, an eye, and common sense, for all such cases; whilst in music, there are constructive laws that lie beyond all ordinary intelligence."

Let us look the matter in the face. There are, I suppose, constructive laws involved in all the cases I have been adducing; yet there is a natural sense of substance we call feeling; and a natural sense of objects we call seeing; and a natural inner perception which, however, in its proper exercise, uncommon, we call common sense. Is there

not also a natural sense of sounds we call an "ear for music ?" I almost hesitate to put seriously what should seem so purely obvious; but it is indispensable to a very serious purpose, and it is virtually denied.

One thing, at least, is certain. If musical common sense be incompetent to speak of music, then music, by inevitable sequence, is incompetent to speak to it. But, then, if it be thus,-if music be indeed this cabalistic something of which a man born with musical sensibilities must, till scientifically instructed, be purely ignorant,-what can plain men and women have to do with it in the house of God? And how dare we Protestants force an unknown language on innocent people?

I do not, of course, imply, that because the musical faculty is innate, it must not have its senses exercised. It is in the analogy of other faculties. There is a science of optics, and a science of perspective; yet it was "a pleasant thing to behold the sun" before Newton ever told us of the prism; and I am pretty sure that infants still distinguish distances without thinking of converging lines and vanishing points; I suspect, also, that none would pin it to its mother's apron till it had learned the theory of gravitation.

I have heard it said, indeed, that since music is a language, we need direct instruction here as in other languages. Perhaps we do; but how? All mother tongues-and music is a mother tongue-is learned, I had almost said, without learning. There are no more rules—as rules for learning to speak than for learning to see or to walk. The child hears, repeats, asks questions, answers-yes, and argues very shrewdly, too-without the remotest conception that there are such things in all the world as logic, rhetoric, or even grammar.

But there is something further. Language, however acquired, is, after all, an affair of convention. Music is something more even than mother tongue. It is native language. It precedes words. The child responds to tones and sounds long ere he can repeat words. He imitates the "moo" before he adds the "cow." Music is, if I may reverently say it, God's language, speaking as naturally to our natural feelings as light and air to our natural organs. We no more want the

knowledge of musical science in order to respond to music, than we want the knowledge of pneumatology in order to breathe.

We are not yet at the end of the question. This natural play of our perceptive and sentient faculties is not only independent of scientific knowledge-it is above it. No doubt man is, or should be, a reasonable being. It does not follow that he is under necessity of anatomizing his perceptions, or the object of them. The highest existence is not in the cold exercise of his intellectual powers; nor are the highest qualities of things about him their capabilities of adjustment in some philosophical system. He is to be "perfect as his Father in heaven," who, though He is all wise, all holy, all mighty, has not declared that He is Wisdom, Holiness, or Power, but that He "is Love." And it will be found that, as his own being is to grow up into this emphatically moral grandeur, so that the very material marvels that surround him, and act upon him, and are a sort of material alphabet to him, have been strangely endowed with qualities that provoke a something beyond the scrutiny of a barren intellect. We have but to open our eyes to find ourselves encompassed by what eludes analysis, defies arithmetic, and refuses to square with geometry. "Earth's deathless green, and heaven's eternal blue," have virtually nothing to do with philosophical hypotheses. Vastness, grandeur, stillness, stability, order, beauty-the ineffable beauty that pervades God's universe, and melts the soul-carry us at once beyond the beggarly elements of human sciences to the dim confines of the eternity all time is looking for and hasting to. The master tones of their mighty message seem almost to disdain-I will not say, the sordid reckonings of the utilitarian, but the vaunted triumphs of the man of science. When the inspired shepherd tuned his harp to the music of the spheres, the still, small voice breathed not the language, whether of physical or metaphysical reasoning. "Lord, what is man?" is not the question of science. Had he begun to calculate, he had soon asked, What are material suns to an immortal soul? It was pure devotional sentiment, not astronomical wonder. The broad heavens were “telling the glory of God;" and the awe-struck soul sank in humility beneath the tidings. Alas! how diverse were the calculations of the "mécanique céleste" from the simple sentiment of the poetic boy!

I am not wandering from my subject. Music belongs, like poetry, and the stupendous power of nature of which they are both resonants, to the more indefinite and undefinable, but higher ranges of our immortal nature. Our sense of it, strictly and happily speaking, is absolutely independent of all notion of analyzing it. When men of science attempt to explain it, we accept their researches. But when, on the mere strength of these, they would assume exclusive knowledge, we must tell them with all possible firmness that we have already learned "a more excellent way"-that love is the true key of knowledge that sensibility is the only infallible test--and that they are just as competent to gauge the power of music by their experiments on the monochord as physicians to test the heart's sympathies by the use of the stethescope. We must be very jealous on this point. We are threatened with an ossification of the heart of music. And the process has not begun with, nor will it ever be confined to, music. We must not be afraid, therefore, to assert that music, however in its

lower elements explicable by science, is above science; and that those who can only feel it stand incomparably higher than those (and they are not few) who can only analyze and explain it. When David charmed away the dark spirit from the rebel king, and when the minstrel solemnized the soul of the expectant prophet, it were worse than trifling to think that Saul or Elisha had the remotest perception of musical science.

The real question, often absurdly sophisticated, is in a sentence. It is not how to compose music, but what is music worth when it is composed? Has it a soul as well as a body? Has it the breath of life? Can it speak sensibly out; and what does it say? Such questions are not answerable by rules. Who asks for rules ere he dares to understand the "Hallelujah Chorus ?

We might go farther and higher yet. It is something that music is everybody's subject, and, therefore, that to dole it out on mere professional terms is to defraud us all of our heritage. This touches, however, but the elementary base of our present object. When it is a question, not of music simply, but of Liturgical music-music that is to be the channel of responsible converse with "the Father of Spirits"-music that, according as it is, or is not, conceived in the spirit of prayer, may be a help or a hindrance-may be like the minstrelsy to the holy prophet, or the unholy bellowings of the priests of Baal-when, I say, all this is in the question, and is the question, there can be conceived no error more monstrous, and no assumption more intolerable, than that such music can only be judged of by professional intelligence. Whether a composition is in strict conformity with science, may be referred to the scientific. That, being so conformed, it is, ipso facto, all we want for Liturgical purposes, or that this ultimate question must be also settled by an appeal to professional judgment, may be assumed, when we can affirm that all scientific music is Liturgical music; or that all who are learned in the schools of music are therefore taught of the Spirit. For myself, I say from my inmost soul, Would that all professional musicians were prophets! Till they are, however we may respect them, individually and collectively, for their private worth no less than their professional knowledge, I make bold to say that we, nonprofessional but Christian men, cannot ignore the subject and be guiltless.

It is, in simple truth, for no idle parade of argument, but for a most solemn and momentous practical purpose, that I have ventured to occupy, once more, the valuable pages of the Christian Observer. We want a reformation of our Liturgical music. Some of the most precious and edifying portions of our public service are handed over to a mode of utterance essentially popish in its origin, and poperizing in its influential character. Week after week, year after year, our young people are growing up in disastrous familiarity with a style of singing -I allude now specifically to chanting-in which, instead of sound ministering to sense, sense is sacrificed to sound; and words, awful in their holiness, are exhibited more or less in masquerade; their rhythm unthought of, their relative importance disregarded; some promiscuously hubble-bubbled; some jerked into pitiable prominency; some drawled out, not to increase the verbal power, but to fill up the