an avail to check the nation's
career, the voice of the reformer should not fail to be raised in its
most powerful tones, and all his energy exerted to form such political
and social combinations as shall effect his purpose. But in those stages
which are prominent in every nation's progress, when the tide of public
opinion sets full and irresistibly in one direction, sweeping along all
thought and energy in its course, against which it were madness to
contend until the tempest shall have worn itself out by its own
violence--more especially when the great questions involve a mere
difference of opinion as to the results of important measures or the
general tendency of the public policy--then, when opposition would only
serve to arouse a factious or disputatious spirit, his part is to glide
quietly along with the popular movement, acquiescing in and reconciling
himself to the condition of affairs till such time as the public
sentiment is ripe, and the circumstances fitting for the advocacy and
the triumph of his own views; meanwhile letting no opportunity escape to
guide the national mind and direct the nation's strivings to such a
consummation.

By such a course only can he effect great results and make durable the
establishment of his own cherished principles.

CHURCH MUSIC.

From the earliest Christian period of which we have any knowledge, music
has been employed in the public worship of Christian communities. Its
purposes are, to afford to the devotion of the worshippers a means of
expression more subtile than even human speech, to increase that
devotion, and to add additional lustre and solemnity to the outward
service offered to God. Music has a wonderful power in stirring the
souls of men, in (so to speak) moving the soil of the heart, that the
good seed sown by prayer and instruction may find ready entrance, and a
wholesome stimulus to facilitate growth. Now, it is the duty of all
concerned in the ordering of public worship to see that the music
employed tends to effect these ends.

In the year 1565, the composers of church music were in the habit of
employing so many and well-known secular melodies, and of rearing upon
them and upon their own inventions such complicated and unintelligible
contrapuntal structures, that the church authorities took the matter
seriously in hand, and there is no knowing what might have been the
final sentence, had not Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina brought his
genius to