This is what we might expect of
our religious musical foundations, which are justifying the standing
condemnation of utilitarian economists so long as the stipendiaries are
content indolently to follow the fortuitous traditions of the books that
lie in the choir, supplemented by the penny-a-sheet music of the common
shops. In the Universities, too, it should be impossible for an
undergraduate not to gain acquaintance with good ecclesiastical music,
and this is not ensured by an occasional rare performance of half a dozen
old masterpieces which are preserved in heartless compliment to
antiquity. It is to such bodies that we must first look for help and
guidance to give our church music artistic importance: for let no one
think that the church can put the artistic question on one side. There is
no escape from art; art is only the best that man can do, and his second,
third, fourth or fifth best are only worse efforts in the same direction,
and in proportion as they fall short of the best the more plainly betray
their artificiality. To refuse the best for the sake of something
inferior of the same kind can never be a policy; it is rather an
uncorrected bad habit, that can only be excused by ignorance; and
ignorance on the question of music is every day becoming less excusable;
and the growing interest and intelligence which all classes are now
showing should force on religion a better appreciation of her most potent
ally. Music being the universal expression of the mysterious and
supernatural, the best that man has ever attained to, is capable of
uniting in common devotion minds that are only separated by creeds, and
it comforts our hope with a brighter promise of unity than any logic
offers. And if we consider and ask ourselves what sort of music we should
wish to hear on entering a church, we should surely, in describing our
ideal, say first of all that it must be something different from what is
heard elsewhere; that it should be a sacred music, devoted to its
purpose, a music whose peace should still passion, whose dignity should
strengthen our faith, whose unquestioned beauty should find a home in our
hearts, to cheer us in life and death; a music worthy of the fair temples
in which we meet, and of the holy words of our liturgy; a music whose
expression of the mystery of things unseen never allowed any trifling
motive to ruffle the sanctity of its reserve. What power for good such a
music would have!

Now such a musi