Various

To the EDITOR of the HARMONICON.

February 20th, 1833.

SIR,

Since the days of the good bishop of Lichfield, who adopted as his motto the truly Christian sentiment, ‘Serve God, and be cheerful,’ it may be questioned whether the musical parts of our church service, ‘chanting and all anthems,’ have ever had a more effectual supporter than the noble Master in Chancery, whose report on the subject called forth the pleasant jeu d’esprit, which was copied into your last number from the Times of the 26th ult. A few years ago, the deans and dignitaries, the canons and prebendaries, the fellows and chaplains, of our cathedral and collegiate churches, were among the first to set the example of depreciating the service in which they were engaged. Lord Henley, and those who echo his opinion, have happily aroused the spirit of the church-dormant; these duties, lately so unimportant, are suddenly invested with an awful and hallowed character, and a few extracts from some of the numerous pamphlets which have lately appeared in defence of these venerable establishments may be interesting to such of your readers as are friends to church discipline, church architecture, and church music[32].

Upon the question, as to the right of abolishing Cathedral institutions, (observes Mr. Pusey, p. 102,) as far as this is a question of law, I would wish to speak with especial diffidence, since the laws do not belong to my profession; except thus far, that it is the concern of all ministers of Christ to urge, that the immutable laws of justice should be observed.... About the origin of the property of Cathedral bodies there is no question; nor, indeed, can there be. One need only turn to any authentic accounts of the institution of Cathedrals, to see (what is, indeed, true of all Church property) that it was uniformly given, not by public, but by private piety.... The question becomes not a legal, but an historical one: the legal principle is granted, that the property can only be disposed of in accordance with the ‘clear will of the donor.’[33] It only remains to inquire what that will was. This, unquestionably, was not the direct religious instruction of the people, but the formation of establishments wherein ministers might be trained to their duties, and Christian studies encouraged. These foundations were originally given for the promotion of pious learning, schools being on this account, in every case, annexed to these establishments.... It would appear then, that neither at the original institution, nor at time of the Reformation, was it intended that the Cathedral clergy should be what they have now mostly become, a parochial, or as this class has been over-narrowly called, the ‘working clergy;’ as if the labours of a literary clergy were less continuous or less exhausting, or as if the annals of our Church did not present as many cases of those who had fallen martyrs to her service in this way, as in her more direct ministrations. The reform, in truth, which is needed to restore these institutions, ‘according to the will of the donor,’ is exactly the contrary to what is now on different sides proposed. The members of our chapters have too little of the leisure which it was intended they should have. They have mostly important, some very extensive, and ill endowed cures. They have no more repose than is allowed to every civil officer; they have none for such works as our ancestors produced. In truth the clergy are already too exclusively of one class: we have not sufficient labourers for a field, which becomes day by day more important, and whose importance they well know, who are so anxious to destroy these institutions. Fas est et ab hoste doceri. When those who have no religion in themselves are so eager, under pretence of furthering religion, to destroy those bulwarks, it may to us, if we will not blind ourselves, be an evidence of their value. This, however, is certain, that estates or the tithes which were bestowed upon these bodies, were not given for the purposes of providing a parochial ministry, otherwise they would have been given to the places themselves, not to these corporations. Under whatever plea then it may be attempted to apply the property of any ecclesiastical corporation to this purpose, and divert it from those to which its donors destined it, it must be on some other ground than that of the ‘clear will of the donor.’

‘Remarks on the prospective and past Benefits of Cathedral Institutions[34],’ p. 102–113. This excellent pamphlet, and one by the Rev. George Townsend, prebendary of Durham, on lay impropriations, will be read with much pleasure by all the loyal and true-hearted members of the Church of England as by law established. Mr. Perceval thus concludes his ‘LETTER TO LORD HENLEY:’

I will not attempt to follow the maze of happy thoughts which have crowded upon your lordship’s brain, and been committed to paper, apparently as rapidly as they occurred to you, the thought of one moment overturning that which went before; but I cannot forbear saying one word of defence on a subject which, like many others, has met your merciless condemnation: I mean our Cathedral music. At page 35, you speak of the ‘coldness and formality of Cathedral service,’ and in a note, style ‘chanting and all anthems, solos, duets, &c., relics of popery. Have a care, my Lord, or you will establish the truth of a claim put forth by the church of Rome, which sounds most grating and offensive in the ears of the English Christians, to be considered the mother, and, therefore, mistress of all other churches. For these modes of singing the praises of our great Creator, which move your pious indignation, are, indeed, relics; but, if I mistake not, relics of ‘Jerusalem which is above,’ and which we have the warrant of the Holy Ghost for styling the mother of us all[35].

The Mosaic church was, as your lordship knows, founded upon the model of the heavenly one; ‘for see,’ said he, ‘that thou make all things according to the pattern showed thee on the Mount.’[36] In this church we find solos, duets, and choruses, introduced into the service of the Almighty, of which the solo of Miriam[37], and the chorus of the women whom she answered, and the duet of Deborah and Barak[38], are sufficient instances; while the whole frame and composition of the Psalms, in their parallelisms and alternations, leave no doubt of the correctness of the conclusions to which Lowth and Cleaver, and Horsley and Jebb, and others, have been led, that they were composed for alternate recitations, like our cathedral chanting; but we may go somewhat higher. It has pleased Almighty God occasionally to encourage his servants in this life by partially withdrawing the clouds which conceal the inhabitants of heaven from our view, and permitting us to catch a glimpse of their employment. We find the Holy Seraphim engaged in an occupation, the feeble imitation of which, by mortal man upon earth, has called forth your severe reprobation. Yes, my lord, they are actually described as ‘chanting’ the praises of Jehovah by alternate movements. So Isaiah teaches us: ‘I saw the Lord sitting upon his throne, high and lifted up. Above it stood the Seraphim; and one cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts! the whole earth is full of his glory.’

But our cathedral service is so cold!

Oh! my Lord! if your own heart does not glow at the hearing of those heavenly melodies, do not envy those, who are formed of happier temperament, the enjoyment and benefit which they draw from them. Many a weary soul, I doubt not, has been refreshed and awakened by them, which else might have remained drowsy and indolent. Many a chord, by means of them, has been struck in a sinner’s breast, which will vibrate to all eternity with the praises of the Lamb. The great and good departed have recorded their sense of the value of them. It is related of the pious George Herbert, that he went usually twice every week to the cathedral church in Salisbury; and at his return would say, that his time spent in prayer and cathedral music elevated his soul, and was his heaven upon earth. But, alas! all these things, which have cheered and solaced God’s servants in their weary pilgrimage, are about to be removed. That fatal and deadly storm, which sour puritanism and envious schism combined to raise against the fairest portion of God’s heritage, is about once more to spread its desolating force on our land; the church of England once more to be overthrown and trampled upon by those whom she admitted into her fold and nourished with her fruits; our pleasant places to be laid waste, ‘the carved work thereof to be broken down with axes and hammers.’ Already are the traitors within and the foes without, arranging their watchwords, and the self-same notes resounded, which were echoed at the former onslaught. Again is our cathedral service, which we copy from the Seraphim, cried down as a relic of popery; and the book of Common Prayer, whose almost every petition has been used by Christian Saints for upwards of twelve hundred years, denounced as an abomination. These are signs of the times which there is no mistaking. There is one ground of comfort, my lord, in all this, which you will rejoice to hear. The desolation cannot last for ever. When the whirlwind has swept by, and they who thought to ride upon it are blown into oblivion, then shall we again lift up our own heads. Either we shall witness the restoration and hear the voice of joy and gladness once more in our dwellings, see the waste places rebuilt, again hear the pealing organ swell its note of praise, and the merry bells ring out their jocund sound, or our pilgrimage will be over, and we shall have exchanged, through the Redeemer’s blood, our earthly choirs for celestial. For your lordship’s sake, I trust that, ere that time arrives, a sounder judgment will possess you in these matters, lest, haply, when the heavenly portals are flung open to receive you, and the sound of the celestial concert strikes your ear, ‘the harpers harping with their harps’, the clang of the archangel’s trumpet, some clear-voiced angel leading the hymns, the Seraphim responding to each other with the Trisagion, and the full chorus of the ‘hundred and forty-four thousand’[39] pouring forth that song, which none but they can learn; your heart be chilled within you; and you show the superior soundness and purity of your piety by turning away in disgust from such ‘papal’ abominations. There is a sentence of the son of Sirach,—‘Blame not before thou hast examined the truth; understand first, and then rebuke.’ Perhaps, if that sentence had been present to your lordship’s recollection, your ill-considered publication would never have seen the light.—p. 26–31.

Having shown you, ex cathedrÂ, the prospective and past benefits of these institutions, originally designed ‘for the promotion of pious learning,’ I am tempted to add a few words on their actual state, and to inquire how far the intentions of the founders have been carried into effect. I will, for the present, confine myself to a single foundation.

The C—— church of——, like most of our great ecclesiastical corporations, is of Anglo-Saxon origin; but the latest statutes were given by Queen Elizabeth towards the close of her reign. They are, consequently, free from any mixture of superstitious ceremonies, and every member of the chapter, on his election, takes an oath to obey them. These statutes, after setting forth among the principal objects of the foundation, the instruction of youth, and the relief of the poor, ‘juventutis in veritate, in virtute, ac bonis literis institutionem, et pauperum perpetuam sustentationem,’ provide for the maintenance and liberal education of six choristers ‘ad minus.’ And the royal legislator does not appoint a fixed annual payment for this purpose, which, in so many instances, from the diminished value of money, has brought ruin upon similar establishments; but, with a prescient regard to the possibility of such a deterioration, it is expressly ordained, that a proper allowance shall be made to the master[40]. Their maintenance has been discontinued.

The music school, within living memory, was a large and lofty room, adjoining the church, and in a corresponding style of architecture. The chapter, in a recent alteration, having determined to fit up a handsome library, took possession, without scruple, of the school-room belonging to the choristers, and the boys have lately received their singing lessons in the church, the chapter giving themselves no concern about any other instructions.

The statutes require that the choristers shall be supplied with a consistent dress. This is no longer provided; and the gentlemen forming the chapter would think themselves disgraced by such a set of raggamuffins about their stables or their dog-kennels, as they allow to officiate in the church; while their very rags are held to be a sufficient reason for excluding them from their own well-endowed grammar school.

Several valuable scholarships and fellowships, in the university of——, are tenable by such persons only as have served as choristers in the C—— church at——. Of this endowment the bona fide choristers are deprived. The members of the chapter, and the neighbouring gentlemen, enter their sons as choristers; they appear for a few Sundays in surplices, and are thus enabled to claim the exhibition.

The cemetery is disfigured with posts and lines, and serves as a drying-ground for the inhabitants of the claustral precincts; while the nave of the church is the favourite resort of their children and nursery-maids, who are permitted to disturb the congregation, should there be one, by their noisy sports.

The patronage of the chapter is very extensive; the tithes of the whole district, for many miles in circuit, belong almost exclusively to them; they unite in their own persons the fullest legislative, executive, and visitatorial powers; and the impoverished churches, and vicars, and parishes, within their jurisdiction, afford the same indisputable evidence of apathy and neglect.

I am prepared to fill up the outline by instances of individual meanness. But I forbear. The parties more immediately concerned cannot fail to recognize the picture; for I hope and trust there is no second example in England, where the wills and charters and statutes of founders and benefactors are so utterly disregarded.

A. T.