e flaw in our argument,
the fault must lie in the premisses; we have omitted some necessary
qualification.

The qualification which we neglected is this, that _the music must be
dignified_, and suitable to the meaning; and we should only have wasted
words in ignoring what we knew all along, if we had not, by so doing,
brought this qualification into its vital prominence, and at the same
time exposed the position of those who neglect it, and the real reason of
the mean condition of our church music.

The use of undignified music for sacred purposes may perhaps be justified
in exceptional cases, which must be left to the judgement of those who
consider all things lawful that they may save some. But if from the
mission service this licence should creep into the special service, and
then invade every act of public worship, it must be met with an edict of
unscrupulous exclusion. Not that it can be truly described as thus having
crept in in our time. It is always creeping, it has flourished in special
habitats for four or five hundred years, and before then there is the
history of Palestrina's great reform of like abuses. If in our time in
England we differ in any respect for the worse, it is rather in the
universal prevalence of a mild form of the degradation, which is perhaps
more degrading than the occasional exceptional abuses of a more flagrant
kind, which cannot hide their scandal but bring their own condemnation.

There is indeed no extreme from which this abuse has shrunk; perhaps the
worst form of it is the setting of sacred hymns to popular airs, which
are associated in the minds of the singers with secular, or even comic
and amatory words[8]: of which it is impossible to give examples, because
the extreme instances are blasphemies unfit to be quoted; and it is only
these which could convey an adequate idea of the licence[9] The essence
of the practice appears to be the production of a familiar excitement,
with the intention of diverting it into a religious channel.

But, even in the absence of secular or profane association,
congregational singing, when provoked by undignified music, such as may
be found in plenty in our modern hymn-books, may be maintained without
the presence of religious feeling, out of mere high spirits, or as we
say, 'in fun,' and may easily give rise to mockery. I have witnessed
examples enough in proof of this, but if I gave them it might be thought
that I wished to amuse profane readers[