'And sayd he would them waste; had not Moses stood (whom he chose) 'fore him i' the breach: to turn his wrath lest that he should waste those.' and again: 'Like as the heart panting doth bray after the water-brooks, even in such wise, O God, my soule after Thee panting looks.' The settings of the tunes in the New England psalm-books were those of Playford and Ravenscroft, but, as we have seen, the congregations habitually introduced original harmonizations of their own. The general method of singing those psalms was known as 'lining out.' That is to say, the minister or deacon first sang each line, to give the key, and the congregation followed his lead--more or less. The results of this system were often ludicrous. For instance, there is the well-known example, cited by Hood, where the deacon declares cryptically: 'The Lord will come and he will not,' and follows this up with the perplexing injunction: 'Be silent, but speak out.' Owing to the efforts of John Cotton and other cultured clergymen the people as a whole soon came to accept singing as proper to divine service, but many decades passed before they could be persuaded that the cultivation of the voice or the use of any outward means to acquire skillfulness in singing was decent or godly. Not to the outward voice, they argued, but to the voice of the heart did God lend ear; and, though their singing was verily as the bellowing of the bulls of Bashan, it mattered not except to the ears of their neighbors, who, in truth, must have been sufficiently calloused to the discord of harsh sounds. This peculiar attitude lasted until well into the eighteenth century. Even as late as 1723 the 'Cases of Conscience,' to which we have referred, contained such questions as: 'Whether you do believe that singing in the worship of God ought to be done skillfully?' and 'whether you do believe that skillfulness in singing may ordinarily be gained in the use of outward means by the blessing of God?' By the efforts of enlightened clergymen like Mather, Symmes, Dwight, Eliot, Walter, and Stoddard the people of New England were finally brought to a realization of the fact that their praise would be just as acceptable to God if offered on the key; but their conversion was a slow and painful process. Two decades of the eighteenth century had passed before they began to pay any attention to the cultivation of church music, and, as we shall see in the next chapter, this awakening interest coincided with the first faint stirrings of a general musical life in the Puritan colonies. W. D. D. FOOTNOTES: