"My wife shall dance, and I will sing, And merrily pass the day." was strangely appropriated to the solemn words,-- "If this be death, I soon shall be From every pain and sorrow free," and did not seem ill-fitted either. "Sacred arrangements," "spiritual songs," "sacred airs," soon followed, and of course demanded singers of capacity and education to sing them. From this was but a step to a paid quartette, and the struggle over this last means of improvement and pleasure in church music is of too recent a date to be more than referred to. I attended a church service not many years ago in Worcester, where an old clergyman, the venerable "Father" Allen, of Shrewsbury, then too aged and feeble to preach, was seated in the front pew of the church. When a quartette of singers began to render a rather operatic arrangement of a sacred song he rose, erect and stately, to his full gaunt height, turned slowly around and glanced reproachfully over the frivolous, backsliding congregation, wrapped around his spare, lean figure his full cloak of quilted black silk, took his shovel hat and his cane, and stalked indignantly and sadly the whole length of the broad central aisle, out of the church, thus making a last but futile protest against modern innovations in church music. Many, in whom the Puritan instincts and blood are still strong, sympathize internally with him in this feeling; and all novelty-lovers must acknowledge that the sublime simplicity and deep piety in which the old Puritan psalm-tunes abound, has seldom been attained in the modern church-songs. Even persons of neither musical knowledge, taste, nor love, feel the power of such a tune as Old Hundred; and more modern and more difficult melodies, though they charm with their harmony and novelty, can never equal it in impressiveness nor in true religious influence. XVI. The Interruptions of the Services.