ing is the natural effect of JOY in the heart, ... and it is also
the natural means of raising EMOTIONS OF JOY in the mind: such JOY AND
THANKFULNESS to God as is the highest perfection of a divine and holy
life.'

Now though I cannot feel the force of all Law's arguments nor easily
bring myself to believe that a person who dislikes singing, and has no
ear for music, will readily find any comfortable assistance to his
private devotion from making efforts to hit off the notes of the scale;
yet I feel that Law's position is in the main sound, and that he has
correctly specified the emotion most proper to that kind of uncultured
singing which he describes: and though congregational psalm-singing
necessarily involves a greater musical capacity than that assumed in
Law's extreme case, and may therefore have a wider field, yet we may
begin by laying down that JOY, PRAISE, and THANKSGIVING give us the first
main head of what is proper to be expressed, and we may extend this head
by adding ADORATION and perhaps the involved emotions of AWE and PEACE
and even the attitude of CONTEMPLATION.

In such a subject as the classification of emotions as they may be
expressed by music of one kind or another, it is plainly impossible to
make any definite tabulation with which all would agree. The very names
of the emotions will, to different minds, call up different associations
of feeling. If any agreement could be arrived at, it would be at the
expense of distinction; and all that I can expect is to have my
distinctions understood, and in the main agreed with. And as I am most
ready to grant to the reader his right to a different opinion on any
detail, I beg of him the same toleration, and that he will rather try to
follow my meaning than dwell on discrepancies which may be due to a fault
of expression, or to a difference of meaning which he and I may attach to
the same word.

With this apology in preamble, I will attempt to make some classification
of emotions as they seem to me to be the possible basis for musical
expression in congregational singing.

We have already one class: I would add a second, to include all the hymns
which exhibit the simple attitude of PRAYER.

A third class I would put under the head of FAITH. Examples of this class
will no doubt often cross with those of the first class, but they will
specify themselves as CELEBRATIONS of events of various COMMEMORATION,
introducing a distinct form, namely NARRATI