CHURCH HYMNS CRITICISED

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 239, 3 July 1919, Page 5

CHURCH HYMNS CRITICISED

PLEA FOR ART AND BEAUT? SIR JOHN M'CLURE ON SANKEY'S (From the "Westminster Gazette.") ' Sir John M'Clure, LL.D., Mus. Doc, Headmaster of Hill Hill, as chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, delivered an address recently at the City Temple. Ho took as his subject "The Public Worship of God," and pleaded for a service that had a personal meaning to the congregation. Dr. M'Clure told the story of a boy at Mill Hill who came to him after evening prayers and asked if he knew "that tho last three nights at prayers you have omitted to pray for our airmen?" "It was not strictly true," added the chairman, "for the general petition was meant to include all our forces; but he had a brother in the Air .Service, and hence foil: that need of special prayer for those who were daily engaged in tho most perilous form of warfare. To this boy, therefore, a petition, which to tho great majority was relatively unimportant, was of vital moment.

Art and Worship. "Tho extent to which art should contribute to worship is too large and too thorny a subject to be treated at length on this occasion," he continued; "I conline myself, therefore, to two or three of the more important issues, it should .be noted that the Puritan protest against highly ornate ritual was, not in its inception and in itself, a condemnation of beauty in worship, though later, in some quarters at lenst, it tended to become su. Had it been so, it would never have had the support of John Milton—to name, only one. It was a protest against the claims which accompanied that ritual, and of which that ritual camo to bo regarded as the outward and visible.sign; against symbols divorced from the reality behind them, which dishonoured and degraded tha truth for which they once stood and thus often suggested what was actually, false; which obscured instead of revealing the beauty of holiness of which often they usurped the place. . "The protest, as indeed was lneyitabe, took an extreme form, and led to tho rejection of some good customs whose loss (as we are now realising) impoverished both worship and spiritual life. Yet simplicity of worship is a noble conception, and it is held (rightly, as J. think) to be tho form best suited to tho highest thoughts and aspirations of mankind." .... Dr Archive referred to the criticism levelled against tho severely plain buildings in which the Scottish country tok are content to worship. He reminded the critics that tho Scottish ministers were probably tho best educated clergy in rho world.

The "Sankey Type." "At the.present time, also, wo aro suffering from two influences which have greatly hampered 11s in our search, for tho highest: first, the introduction from America of a' host of tunes of what i* called the 'Sankey type,' few of which reach even the standard of respectable mediocrity, and many of which are hopelessly vulgar; and, second, tho character of much of the mid-A r ictoria Art which, in both music and other branches, was too often content to achieve the rciriy pretty or even the merely tawdry, instead of striving after the sublime and tho beautiful. But a finer taste is growing amongst us, and the test' of to-day will certainly not be the 'best' of tho next generation. The time is coming— i<nd it cannot come too soon—when a Christian congregation will bo ashamed to offer to Almighty God such pitiable doggerel as 'Fight the good fight with all thy might'; nor will their sense of what is seemly—to take no higher ground—permit them to sing their evening hymn of thanksgiving to a valse-tune, which is but a vulgarised version of 'Jessio the Flower of Dumblane.'"

He pleaded for the best type tf music. Attempts had been made to make their services attractive nhon tlio real need was to make them worshipful. On the subject of prayers he said: "If we continue the old practice of using 'free prayer' only, aro wo not placing upon our ministers a burden which nono of them can bear? Already external claims upon them keep them so busy that many of them cannot get on with their pioper work. It would need a mental and spiritual genius to fulfil the varied diiUes which fall to the lot of a Congrcgation.il minister."