l these, we require a music adapted
to signify the relations between ourselves and our Heavenly Father, a
music which shall express adoration and love, praise and thanksgiving,
contrition and humble confidence, which shall implore mercy and waft
prayer to the very gates of the abode of omnipotence. Let such music be
simple or complex, according to the thought to be rendered or the
capacity of the executants, let it be for voices, for instruments, or
for a blending of the two, but let it always be appropriate to the
subject, and rise with the thought or emotions to be conveyed. Who can
tell what would be the effect of such a church music? What a feeling of
earnestness and sincerity would it not lend to services now often marred
by the shallowness or meretricious glitter of their musical portions?
The range is wide, the field broad; there is scope for grandeur,
sublimity, power, jubilation, the brightest strains of extatic joy,
mourning, pathos, and the passionate pleading of the human soul severed
from its highest good; but all should be in accordance with the dignity
of the personalities represented: on the one hand, the Father and
Creator of all, and on the other, the weak, erring, dependent creature,
made, nevertheless, in the image of his Creator, and for whom a God
thought it no unworthiness to live, to suffer, and to die.

Have we any such music? Yes--a little; but that little is not always the
best known nor the most frequently employed. Are there any composers now
capable of writing such? Are the composers of genius, or even of talent,
sufficiently earnest and devout? for here we want no shams. Each one
must answer these questions in accordance with his own experience. The
practical question is, What can be done toward an amelioration of the
present state of affairs, not confined to this continent, but unhappily
only too prevalent everywhere? Let the head of the musical department of
every church service begin by weeding from his repertory all _trash_,
whether profane or simply stupid and nonsensical. As the number of
musical creations remaining will not be very large, let him retain for
the present all that are not positively bad or inane; a few old song
melodies have, through long usage, lost their original associations, and
hence, though perhaps only imperfectly adapted to devotional purposes,
are yet, on the whole, unobjectionable, and perhaps better than many
modern inventions.

An idea seems prevalent that