PSALMODY. comprising the sacred song which was usually sung after the observance of the Passover. No one who is aware of this custom of the Jews can peruse these psalms without being much impressed with the rich appropriateness and significance of that hymn as sung at the celebration of the last of the Passovers of the Law. But although the sacred music of the Hebrews was merely a sonorous intoning of the psalm, in which a very artless melody was followed, such as is practised still by the modern Jews, it is evident that they had also a music of a more artistic and definite character. The performance of David on his harp before Saul must have been of a high class, and probably was distinguished by the art and pathos of its melody. This, however, was not the characteristic of the sacred music of the Hebrews. Their instruments were, for the most part, monotonous, clashing, and noisy; and even the finest effect of the two hundred thousand musicians who, Josephus is supposed to allege,† were at the dedication of Solomon's temple must have depended only on a mechanical adjustment of time, and would probably have been offensive and Do not misunderstand my subject. It will have little to do with music, but will chiefly concern the hymns to which music has been consecrated. I had, indeed, almost ventured on a separate disquisition on the old music of the Hebrews, by way of preface and explanation of my present remarks; but we know so little on that subject that I could not have written anything very definite, or instructive, or interesting. All that I require to say on the music of old Israel can be told in a very few words. For it appears certain that music among the Hebrews was not by any means so scientifically understood or practised as among the civilized nations of modern times-that it principally employed instruments of percussion-and that it did not assume the varied though definite form which characterises the sacred music of the present day. The musical services of the synagogue and the temple consisted more in chant than in song, and easily adapted themselves to lines and sentences of every varied proportion. Accordingly, the style and structure of the Psalms, so far as music is concerned, are on no recognisable model: there are lines of extraordinary length associated abruptly and variously with lines of only a few sylla-unmusical to a modern European. To bles: : and, making every allowance for our ignorance of the original pronunciation of the sacred language, there is still no doubt whatever that the vocal music of the temple must have resembled the accommodating method of modern recitative or intoning, and never have developed itself in the measured and definite melody which charms us in such compositions as Martyrdom or Old Hundred. In our religious services a few verses of a psalm are all that can well be sung at one time, but among the Hebrews several psalms or entire compositions were generally chanted; and there is every reason to believe that the "hymn" which our Saviour and His disciples sung after the institution of the Lord's Supper, consisted of Psalms cxv., cxvi., cxvii., cxviii., these 334 this day the music of the East retains a similar character, and the reader may find a very favourable specimen of it in the chant of the Yezidi priests, printed in the Appendix to Layard's Nineveh and Babylon. An oriental ear, however, can alone enjoy oriental music. To us it is monotonous and harsh, and fails to produce, in general, any fine effect. But the effect on natives of the east, is rapturous. The Arabian servant of Niebuhr, who had listened to the finest music of Europe, no sooner heard Arabic music, than he cried out, in contempt of the other: "By Allah, that is fine! God bless you." In the Christian Church from the first, • Buxtorfii Lex., &c., &c. + Antiq. Jud. viii. 3. Reisebeschreib. nach Arabien, p. 176. ̧ psalmody formed an important part of divine service. Our Lord's example gave authority and sanction to the continuance of the ancient practice; and the express direction of many passages in the New Testament gave it a prescribed place in Christian worship. St. Paul, for example, enjoined the Colossians to teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. ' * An unwarrantable use, however, has in our day been made of this passage, as if it expressly required the employment of hymns and spiritual songs as distinguished from what we commonly understand as the Psalms. The terms employed by St. Paul have no such signification, and, as every Hebrew scholar knows, have technical reference to the various compositions which make up "The Psalms of David." That inspired book is a collection of "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." The employment of other sacred songs in Christian worship should be vindicated on better ground, and ought not to call in the aid of questionable or false support. That the psalms of David were chiefly and almost exclusively used in devotion by the apostles and those who followed their guidance, there can be no doubt. Yet the famous testimony of Pliny † that the Christians used to meet on a certain day and sing a hymn to Christ as God, obviously refers to a hymn, not now extant, of the apostolic age, breathing the fulness and spirit of the better dispensation, and plainly celebrating the revelation of the mystery which David and the prophets had only seen afar off. Mention is made of hymns of this nature in an early author quoted by Eusebius, "Whatever psalms and hymns were written by the brethren from the beginning, celebrate Christ, the Word of God, by asserting His divinity."+ I have still to refer to the manner in which the ancient sacred songs were sung; for this will to some extent affect their significance. In Scripture there are songs more ancient than the Song of Moses, but it is the earliest regarding • Col. iii, 16. Pliny, Ep. x. 27. Quoted by Euseb. v. 28, which we have special information. We do not know whether the rythmical parallelisms of Lamech * assumed form under the solemn tones of the harp or organ of his son Jubal. It is worthy of notice, however, that instruments of music are referred to before we have any instance of poetical composition. Nor can we tell whether the prophecy of Noah † found voice in musical cadences, stern and low, as it foretold the fate of Canaan, and shrill and trumpet-like as it spoke of the sunny tents of Shem, and the far-extended coasts of Japhet. Jacob, too, before he died, gathered his sons around him, and, in the stately mood of sacred song, foretold what should befal them in the latter days; yet we know not whether the voice of the old man was soft and slow in his "blessings on the head of him who was separated from his brethren," and high and sonorous as it proclaimed the gathering of the people and the coming of Shiloh. But when the Song of Moses was sung on the shore of the Red Sea, we know, with some minuteness, how the triumph was celebrated. The method then followed, gives significance to some of the psalms, and was practised long after among the Hebrews. "Miriam, the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." It is singular, that Bishop Heber, who was usually very correct in his delineation of Scriptural character and incident, has imagined that Miriam sung the narrative of the Song of Moses, and that the men of Israel only joined in the chorus. His beautiful poem, "The passage of the Red Sea," closes with these stirring lines-how sad that they are incorrect! "Where now," she sang, "the tall Egyptian On's sunlike shield, and Zoan's chariot, where? But, however picturesque Heber's representation may be, it is certainly erroneous, for Miriam, so far from sustaining the narrative of the triumphal song, merely led the women who supplied the chorus. She "answered the men," as one version actually renders it; and thus at every interval of the narrative the shrill sound of timbrels, in truly oriental method, accompanied the voices of Miriam and the women of Israel as they repeated the chorus, "Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." This method of singing, in which one party replies to another, or takes up an alternate passage, was afterwards, as I have said, common among the Hebrews. It is mentioned by Ezra as the prescribed method of praise, and it is essentially requisite to the full appreciation of some of the psalms. The twenty-fourth psalm, for example, can only be properly appreciated when the method in which it was intended to be sung is understood. The same must be said of many other psalms, in which the abrupt transition of subject, and the alteration of number and person, plainly indicate the manner in which alone they could be intelligibly represented. There is, however, no affinity between the mode of praise to which I am referring, and the practice of the Church of England, which, in careless disregard of the peculiar structure of a psalm, and the dependence of the meaning on a strict connexion between several sentences, apportions alternate verses to the minister and the congregation. In some cases, this order may happen to be felicitous and instructive, but in the overwhelming majority of cases, it will rather prevent a clear perception of the structure and practical design of the composition. The ancient method took no account of mere sentences, but was based upon the spirit and meaning of the psalm. Many sentences Ezra iii. 11. might compose one division, and a single brief response comprise the other. The eightieth psalm is an instance of such a division, for the third verse, with a verbal variation, is the response, three times repeated. That variation is remarkable and very significant, though few of the metrical versions have observed it. The first response is, "Turn us again, O GOD, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved." The next is, “Turn us again, O GOD OF HOSTS," &c.; and the third is, "Turn us again, O LORD God or Hosts," &c. A reference to the psalm will shew the exquisite propriety and significance of these progressive variations, and how much suggestive teaching is involved in the neglected structure of the Word of God. By the skill and intelligence in which the psalmody was at first ordered, there were presented to the worshippers, in the simplest and most impressive form, all those antitheses and significant arrangements which now only occasionally lighten on the labour and learning of modern criticism. Yet, it must be owned, that among all the calamities which the Jews brought upon themselves by their offences, one of the most grievous was the loss of this very method of praise which had been so suggestive and instructive. After their return from the Babylonish captivity, the language of the psalms ceased to be generally spoken and understood in the land of Judea. The people gathered their knowledge of the law and the prophets from the Chaldee interpreters in the synagogues, and must, therefore, have failed to realise, with any thing like ancient appreciation, the glorious burden of the songs of Israel. Indeed, upwards of two hundred and seventy years before Christ, the titles to some of the psalms, which in a number of cases are supposed to be directions to the singers, were unintelligible to the Jews and to the translators of the Septuagint version. That version was for several centuries in high estimation with the Jews, and though acknowledging its ignorance of everything relating to psalmody, was used in many synagogues • Prideaux's Connection; Part I., book v. in Judea in preference to the Hebrew. | effectually destroy every quality for It is from this version, also, that our Lord which that method was excellent. Theoand His apostles generally make their doret* says that Flavianus and Diodorus, quotations from the Old Testament. two laymen in the Church at Antioch, were the first who divided the choir and taught the people to sing the psalms of David responsively. But an earlier historian † refers the introduction of responsive hymns at Antioch to Ignatius, about the close of the first century. The transition from the temple or the synagogue to the church was not great or violent. The one was but the healthy and higher development of the other. The Christian left nothing sacred to the exclusive keeping of the Jew. The law and the prophets retained all their authority and assumed far nobler significance in the Christian assembly; and the hymns of the sweet singer of Israel which, for ages, had given sublime expression to the praise of the temple, were still the songs of the apostles and followers of the King of Sion. We have no reason to suppose that these apostles introduced any material change in psalmody. They continued to frequent the synagogue as well to worship as to teach; they resorted to the temple at the hour of prayer, and sought to demonstrate that the Gospel which they preached was the very promise to which "the twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hoped to come." No directory was given to introduce any new method of praise in the Christian Church; and, therefore, we may safely conclude, that the psalms continued to be sung by devout Christians as they had sung them when they were devout Jews-that, in the public assembly, the psalms were sung responsively, and in private, more according to the modern method. For St. James refers to the private act of one individual when he says, "Is any among you af flicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms." The practice of the Gentile converts would, of course, be regulated by their teachers. Now, it is very evident that the excellence of the ancient Hebrew method depended essentially on the intelligent perception which it shewed of the spirit and design of the psalm. It did not consist in a merely mechanical division of the hymn into alternate passages. This might, indeed, be done to the great injury of the psalm; and while presenting a resemblance to the ancient method, would, by its form, James v. 13. From what has been said of the music of the temple and synagogue, which, doubtless, in character, would be followed in Christian assemblies, any one may see that a metrical version of the psalter was at first no desideratum. In the Christian Church, at an early age, worshippers from different nations and speaking different languages, sometimes mingled in the same congregation, and joined in the psalm. Jerome says of the funeral of the Lady Paula, that "some of the bishops led up the choir of singers, and the people sounded forth the psalms in order, some in Greek, some in Latin, some in Syriac, according to the different language of every nation." The intonation of the psalms needed no measured lines, and depended on no musical arrangement of syllables. But a different style of music soon began to be cultivated. The want of measured lines became perplexing; and the psalms of the Septuagint, the Syriac, or the Latin version had to yield to other compositions. The sweetness of the melody was accounted of more importance than the significance of the hymn. Augustine complains bitterly of this corruption, and acknowledges his share of the fault. § Rabanus Maurus, as quoted by Hooker, mentions that, at first, the singing of the Church was simple, but that the method which afterwards obtained "was not instituted so much for their cause which are spiritual, as to the end that into grosser and heavier minds, whom bare words do not easily move, the sweetness of melody might make some entrance for good things."|| We have certainly no quarrel with "the sweetness of melo Theodoret ii. 24. + Socrates vi. 8. § Confess. x. 33. FEB. dy," but are seriously concerned with the evils which an undue attention to mere sound and a corresponding neglect of the spirit and meaning of the psalms eventually developed. In fact, we are at this moment occupied with one of the many ways in which Romish ecclesiastics have given to an empty form all the import [1856 ance and attributes of the spirit, without virtue ascribed to merely ceremonial obwhich the fairest form is worthless. The servances, the fables of sacramental efficacy, are all akin to the fatal error which constituted sweet sounds the only or the chief excellence of divine praise. (To be Continued.) E THE MIND OF JESUS. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." PATIENCE. God, it may be all mystery; no footprints of love traceable in the chequered "He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter." path; no light in the clouds above; no ISAIAH liii. 7. How great was the patience of Jesus! Even among His own disciples how forbearingly He endured their blindness, their misconceptions, and hardness of heart! Philip had been for three years with Him, yet he had "not known Him!" -all that time he had remained in strange and culpable ignorance of his Lord's dignity and glory. See how tenderly Jesus bears with him, giving him nothing in reply for his confession of ignorance but unparalleled promises of grace! Peter, the honoured and trusted, becomes a renegade and a coward. Justly might his dishonoured Lord, stung with such unrequited love, have cut the unworthy cumberer down; but He spares him, bears with him, gently rebukes him, and loves him more than ever. Divine Sufferer in the terminating scenes See the of His own ignominy and woe. How patient! "As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth." In these awful moments, outraged omnipotence might have summoned twelve legions of angels, and put into the hand of each a vial of wrath; but He submits in meek, majestic silence. Verily, in Him "patience had her perfect work!" Think of this same patience with His Church and people since He ascended to glory. The years upon years He has borne with their perverse resistance of His grace, their treacherous ingratitude, their wayward wanderings, their hardness of heart, and contempt of His holy Word. Yet, behold the forbearing love of this Saviour God, His hand of mercy is "stretched out still!" Child of God! art thou now undergoing some bitter trial! The way of thy 338 ray in the dark future. Be patient! for Him." "The Lord is good to them that wait shall renew their strength." Or hast thou been long tossed on some bed of "They that wait on the Lord sickness, days of pain and nights of weariness appointed thee?-Be patient! "I trust this groaning," said a suffering saint, "is not murmuring." God by this very affliction is nurturing within thee this beauteous grace which shone so conspicuously in the character of thy dear Lord. With Him it was a lovely habit of the soul. With thee, the "tribulation" which worketh "patience needful discipline. "It is good for a 99 is man that he should both hope and quietly thou suffering some unmerited wrong or wait for the salvation of God." unkindness, exposed to harsh and woundArt ing accusations, hard for flesh and blood to bear?-Be patient! per; remember how much evil may be Beware of hastiness of speech or temdone by a few inconsiderate words, of Jesus standing before a human tribu"spoken unadvisedly with the lip." Think nal, in the silent submissiveness of conscious innocence and integrity; leave thy cause with God. Let this be the only form of thy complaint, "O God! I am oppressed, undertake thou for me." souls." Let it not be a grace for pecu- same mind." |