Part 22 (1/2)
It is safe to prognosticate, from the course of the history up to this point, that the subject of the conduct of wors.h.i.+p will become more and more seriously a subject of study in the American church in all its divisions; that the discussions thereon arising will be attended with strong antagonisms of sentiment; that mutual antagonisms within the several sects will be compensated by affiliations of men like-minded across sectarian lines; and that thus, as many times before, particular controversies will tend to general union and fellows.h.i.+p.
One topic under this t.i.tle of Liturgics requires special mention--the use of music in the church. It was not till the early part of the eighteenth century that music began to be cultivated as an art in America.[391:1] Up to that time ”the service of song in the house of the Lord” had consisted, in most wors.h.i.+ping a.s.semblies on this continent, in the singing of rude literal versifications of the Psalms and other Scriptures to some eight or ten old tunes handed down by tradition, and variously sung in various congregations, as modified by local practice.
The coming in of ”singing by rule” was nearly coincident with the introduction of Watts's psalms and hymns, and was attended with like agitations. The singing-school for winter evenings became an almost universal social inst.i.tution; and there actually grew up an American school of composition, quaint, rude, and ungrammatical, which had great vogue toward the end of the last century, and is even now remembered by some with admiration and regret. It was devoted mainly to psalmody tunes of an elaborate sort, in which the first half-stanza would be sung in plain counterpoint, after which the voices would chase each other about in a lively imitative movement, coming out together triumphantly at the close. They abounded in forbidden progressions and empty chords, but were often characterized by fervor of feeling and by strong melodies. A few of them, as ”Lenox” and ”Northfield,” still linger in use; and the productions of this school in general, which amount to a considerable volume, are ent.i.tled to respectful remembrance as the first untutored utterance of music in America. The use of them became a pa.s.sionate delight to our grandparents; and the traditions are fresh and vivid of the great choirs filling the church galleries on three sides, and tossing the theme about from part to part.
The use of these rudely artificial tunes involved a gravely important change in the course of public wors.h.i.+p. In congregations that accepted them the singing necessarily became an exclusive privilege of the choir.
To a lamentable extent, where there was neither the irregular and spontaneous e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of the Methodist nor the rubrical response of the Episcopalian, the people came to be shut out from audible partic.i.p.ation in the acts of public wors.h.i.+p.
A movement of musical reform in the direction of greater simplicity and dignity began early in this century, when Lowell Mason in Boston and Thomas Hastings in New York began their mult.i.tudinous publications of psalmody. Between them not less than seventy volumes of music were published in a period of half as many years. Their immense and successful fecundity was imitated with less success by others, until the land was swamped with an annual flood of church-music books. A thin diluvial stratum remains to us from that time in tunes, chiefly from the pen of Dr. Mason, that have taken permanent place as American chorals.
Such pieces as ”Boylston,” ”Hebron,” ”Rockingham,” ”Missionary Hymn,”
and the adaptations of Gregorian melodies, ”Olmutz” and ”Hamburg,” are not likely to be displaced from their hold on the American church by more skilled and exquisite compositions of later schools. But the fertile labors of the church musicians of this period were affected by the market demand for new material for the singing-school, the large church choir, and the musical convention. The music thus introduced into the churches consisted not so much of hymn-tunes and anthems as of ”sacred glees.”[392:1]
Before the middle of the century the Episcopal Church had arrived at a point at which it was much looked to to set the fas.h.i.+ons in such matters as church music and architecture. Its influence at this time was very bad. It was largely responsible for the fas.h.i.+on, still widely prevalent, of subst.i.tuting for the church choir a quartet of professional solo singers, and for the degradation of church music into the dainty, languis.h.i.+ng, and sensuous style which such ”artists” do most affect. The period of ”The Grace Church Collection,” ”Greatorex's Collection,” and the sheet-music compositions of George William Warren and John R. Thomas was the lowest tide of American church music.
A healthy reaction from this vicious condition began about 1855, with the introduction of hymn-and-tune books and the revival of congregational singing. From that time the progressive improvement of the public taste may be traced in the character of the books that have succeeded one another in the churches, until the admirable compositions of the modern English school of psalmody tend to predominate above those of inferior quality. It is the mark of a transitional period that both in church music and in church architecture we seem to depend much on compositions and designs derived from older countries. The future of religious art in America is sufficiently well a.s.sured to leave no cause for hurry or anxiety.
In glancing back over this chapter, it will be strange if some are not impressed, and unfavorably impressed, with a disproportion in the names cited as representative, which are taken chiefly from some two or three sects. This may justly be referred in part, no doubt, to the author's point of view and to the ”personal equation”; but it is more largely due to the fact that in the specialization of the various sects the work of theological literature and science has been distinctively the lot of the Congregationalists and the Presbyterians, and preeminently of the former.[394:1] It is matter of congratulation that the inequality among the denominations in this respect is in a fair way to be outgrown.
Special mention must be made of the peculiarly valuable contribution to the liturgical literature of America that is made by the oldest of our episcopal churches, the Moravian. This venerable organization is rich not only in the possession of a heroic martyr history, but in the inheritance of liturgic forms and usages of unsurpa.s.sed beauty and dignity. Before the other churches had emerged from a half-barbarous state in respect to church music, this art was successfully cultivated in the Moravian communities and missions. In past times these have had comparatively few points of contact and influence with the rest of the church; but when the elements of a common order of divine wors.h.i.+p shall by and by begin to grow into form, it is hardly possible that the Moravian traditions will not enter into it as an important factor.
A combination of conditions which in the case of other bodies in the church has been an effective discouragement to literary production has applied with especial force to the Roman Catholic Church in America.
First, its energies and resources, great as they are, have been engrossed by absolutely prodigious burdens of practical labor; and secondly, its necessary literary material has been furnished to it from across the sea, ready to its hand, or needing only the light labor of translation. But these two conditions are not enough, of themselves, to account for the very meager contribution of the Catholic Church to the common religious and theological literature of American Christendom.
Neither is the fact explained by the general low average of culture among the Catholic population; for literary production does not ordinarily proceed from the man of average culture, but from men of superior culture, such as this church possesses in no small number, and places in positions of undisturbed ”learned leisure” that would seem in the highest degree promotive of intellectual work. But the comparative statistics of the Catholic and the Protestant countries and universities of Germany seem to prove conclusively that the spirit and discipline of the Roman Church are unfavorable to literary productiveness in those large fields of intellectual activity that are common and free alike to the scholars of all Christendom. It remains to be seen whether the stimulating atmosphere and the free and equal compet.i.tions of the New World will not show their invigorating effect in the larger activity of Catholic scholars, and their liberation from within the narrow lines of polemic and defensive literature. The republic of Christian letters has already shown itself prompt to welcome accessions from this quarter. The signs are favorable. Notwithstanding severe criticisms of their methods proceeding from the Catholic press, or rather in consequence of such criticisms, the Catholic inst.i.tutions of higher learning are rising in character and in public respect; and the honorable enterprise of establis.h.i.+ng at Was.h.i.+ngton an American Catholic university, on the upbuilding of which shall be concentrated the entire intellectual strength and culture of this church, promises an invigorating influence that shall extend through that whole system of educational inst.i.tutions which the church has set on foot at immense cost, and not with wholly satisfactory results.
Recent events in the Catholic Church in America tend to rea.s.sure all minds on an important point on which not bigots and alarmists only, but liberal-minded citizens apostolically willing to ”look not only on their own things but also on the things of others,” have found reasonable ground for anxiety. The American Catholic Church, while characterized in all its ranks, in respect of loyal devotion to the pope, by a high type of ultramontane orthodoxy, is to be administered on patriotic American principles. The brief term of service of Monsignor Satolli as papal legate clothed with plenipotentiary authority from the Roman see stamped out the scheme called from its promoter ”Cahenslyism,” which would have divided the American Catholic Church into permanent alien communities, conserving each its foreign language and organized under its separate hierarchy. The organization of parishes to be administered in other languages than English is suffered only as a temporary necessity. The deadly warfare against the American common-school system has abated. And the anti-American denunciations contained in the bull and syllabus of December 8, 1864, are openly renounced as lacking the note of infallibility.[396:1]
Of course, as in all large communities of vigorous vitality, there will be mutually antagonist parties in this body; but it is hardly to be doubted that with the growth and acclimatization of the Catholic Church in America that party will eventually predominate which is most in sympathy with the ruling ideas of the country and the age.
FOOTNOTES:
[377:1] For fuller accounts of ”the Mercersburg theology,” with references to the literature of the subject, see Dubbs, ”The Reformed Church, German” (American Church History Series, vol. viii.), pp. 219, 220, 389-378; also, Professor E. V. Gerhart in ”Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia,” pp. 1473-1475.
[384:1] See above, p. 375.
[386:1] The program of Yale Divinity School for 1896-97 announces among the ”required studies in senior year” lectures ”on some important problems of American life, such as Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism; Races in the United States; Immigration; the Modern City; the Wage System; the Relations of Employer and Employed; Social Cla.s.ses; the Causes, Prevention, and Punishment of Crime; and University Settlements.”
[386:2] Williston Walker, ”The Congregationalists,” pp. 245, 246.
[387:1] See above, pp. 182-184.
[387:2] The only relic of this work that survives in common use is the immortal lyric, ”I love thy kingdom, Lord,” founded on a motif in the one hundred and thirty-seventh psalm. This, with Doddridge's hymn, ”My G.o.d, and is thy table spread?” continued for a long time to be the most important church hymn and eucharistic hymn in the English language. We should not perhaps have looked for the gift of them to two Congregationalist ministers, one in New England and the other in old England. There is no such ill.u.s.tration of the spiritual unity of ”the holy catholic church, the fellows.h.i.+p of the holy,” as is presented in a modern hymn-book.
[388:1] Professor Gerhart, in ”Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia,” p. 1475.
[391:1] ”Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Collections,” second series, vol. iv., p. 301; quoted in the ”New Englander,” vol. xiii., p. 467 (August, 1855).