Our Church, with the remarkable caution which she displays so often, has
not attempted it. She has received the Psalms and Songs from Scripture;
and, rejecting the Roman Hymns, has substituted in their stead, not
others, but a metrical version of the Psalms. This abstinence has led on
the one hand to some of her members on their own responsibility supplying
the deficiency, and has incurred the complaint of others, who argued that
she ought to have taken on herself what, being right in itself, will
certainly be done by private hands, if not by the fitting authority. But,
in truth, when it was necessary for her to abandon those she had
received, nothing was left to her but to wait till she should receive
others, as in the course of ages she had already received, by little and
little.
The Roman Hymns, whether good or bad, were the work of no one generation,
much less the outpourings of one mind. They were not the contents of one
collection, published all new in a day according to the will of man. They
were the gradual accumulations of centuries, bearing in old and new upon
one treasure-house. When there was a call to reject them, there was
nothing to be done but begin again. We could not be young and old at
once. It was a stern necessity alone which could compel us to change from
what we were; but being changed, so far we were not what we were, and
must be what the primitive Church was in these respects, poor and
ill-furnished. We began the world again. This is the proper answer to
inconsiderate complaints and impatient interference. There have before
now been divines who could write a Liturgy in thirty-six hours. Such is
not our Church's way. She is not the empiric to make things to order, and
to profess to anticipate the course of nature, which, under grace, as
under Providence, is slow. She waits for that majestic course to perfect
in its own good time, what she cannot extort from it; for the gradual
drifting of precious things upon her shore, now one and now another, out
of which she may complete her rosary and enrich her beads,--beads and
rosary more pure and true than those which at the command of duty she
flung away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account