re we surprised that the world is passing
us by? We say and we sing a great many things which it is incredible
to suppose we would address to God if we really thought He were
present. Yet anthems and congregational singing are either a sacrifice
solemnly and joyously offered to God or else all the singing is less,
and worse, than nothing in a church service. But how often sentimental
and restless music, making not for restraint and reverence, not
for the subduing of mind and heart but for the expression of those
expansive and egotistical moods which are of the essence of romantic
singing, is what we employ. There is a great deal of truly religious
music, austere in tone, breathing restraint and reverence, quietly
written. The anthems of Palestrina, Anerio, Viadana, Vittoria among
the Italians; of Bach, Haydn, Handel, Mozart among the Germans; and
of Tallis, Gibbons and Purcell among the English, are all of the truly
devout order. Yet how seldom are the works of such men heard in our
churches, even where they employ professional singers at substantial
salaries. We are everywhere now trying to give our churches splendid
and impressive physical accessories, making the architecture more and
more stately and the pews more and more comfortable! Thus we attempt
an amalgam of a mediaeval house of worship with an American domestic
interior, adoring God at our ease, worshiping Him in armchairs,
offering prostration of the spirit, so far as it can be achieved along
with indolence of the body.

So we advertise and concertize and have silver vases and costly
flowers and conventional ecclesiastical furniture. But we still hold a
"small-and-early" in the vestibule before service and a "five o'clock"
in the chapel afterward. Sunday morning church is a this-world
function with a pietized gossip and a decorous sort of sociable with
an intellectual fillip thrown in. Thus we try to make our services
attractive to the secular instincts, the non-religious things, in
man's nature. We try to get him into the church by saying, "You will
find here what you find elsewhere." It's rather illogical. The church
stands for something different. We say, "You will like to come and be
one of us because we are not different." The answer is, "I can get the
things of this world better in the world, where they belong, than with
you." Thus we have naturalized our very offices of devotion! Hence
the attempts to revive worship are incongruous and inconsistent. H