ters
as church music and architecture. Its influence at this time was very
bad. It was largely responsible for the fashion, still widely prevalent,
of substituting for the church choir a quartet of professional solo
singers, and for the degradation of church music into the dainty,
languishing, and sensuous style which such "artists" do most affect. The
period of "The Grace Church Collection," "Greatorex's Collection," and
the sheet-music compositions of George William Warren and John R. Thomas
was the lowest tide of American church music.

A healthy reaction from this vicious condition began about 1855, with
the introduction of hymn-and-tune books and the revival of
congregational singing. From that time the progressive improvement of
the public taste may be traced in the character of the books that have
succeeded one another in the churches, until the admirable compositions
of the modern English school of psalmody tend to predominate above those
of inferior quality. It is the mark of a transitional period that both
in church music and in church architecture we seem to depend much on
compositions and designs derived from older countries. The future of
religious art in America is sufficiently well assured to leave no cause
for hurry or anxiety.

* * * * *

In glancing back over this chapter, it will be strange if some are not
impressed, and unfavorably impressed, with a disproportion in the names
cited as representative, which are taken chiefly from some two or three
sects. This may justly be referred in part, no doubt, to the author's
point of view and to the "personal equation"; but it is more largely due
to the fact that in the specialization of the various sects the work of
theological literature and science has been distinctively the lot of the
Congregationalists and the Presbyterians, and preeminently of the
former.[394:1] It is matter of congratulation that the inequality among
the denominations in this respect is in a fair way to be outgrown.

Special mention must be made of the peculiarly valuable contribution to
the liturgical literature of America that is made by the oldest of our
episcopal churches, the Moravian. This venerable organization is rich
not only in the possession of a heroic martyr history, but in the
inheritance of liturgic forms and usages of unsurpassed beauty and
dignity. Before the other churches had emerged from a half-barbarous
state in respect to church m