of church music, has left
us this testimony: "It is to my certain knowledge that that holy man of
God, Luther, prophet and apostle to the German nation, took great delight
in music, both in choral and figural composition. I spent many a
delightful hour with him in singing; and ofttimes I have seen the dear
man wax so happy and merry in heart over the singing that it is well-nigh
impossible to weary or content him therewithal. And his discourse
concerning music was most noble."

In his "Discourse in Praise of Music," Luther gives thanks to God for
having bestowed the power of song on the "nightingale and the many
thousand birds of the air," and again he writes, "I give music the
highest and most honorable place; and every one knows how David and all
the saints put their divine thoughts into verse, rhyme, and song."

Luther had little patience with the iconoclasts of his day. He wrote in
the Preface to Walther's collection of hymns, in 1525: "I am not of the
opinion that all sciences should be beaten down and made to cease by the
Gospel, as some fanatics pretend, but I would fain see all the arts, and
music, in particular, used in the service of Him who hath given and
created them." At another time he was even more emphatic: "If any man
despises music, as all fanatics do, for him I have no liking; for music
is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it drives out
the devil and makes people cheerful. Then one forgets all wrath,
impurity, sycophancy, and other vices."

Luther loved the Latin hymns that glorified Christ. He recognized,
however, that they were so permeated with Mariolatry and other errors of
the Roman Church that a refining process was necessary in order to rid
them of their dross and permit the fine gold to appear. Moreover, the
Latin hymns, even in their most glorious development, had not grown out
of the spiritual life of the congregation. The very genius of the Roman
Church precluded this, for church music and song was regarded as
belonging exclusively to the priestly office. Moreover, since the entire
worship was conducted in Latin, the congregation was inevitably doomed to
passive silence.

Brave efforts by John Huss and his followers to introduce congregational
singing in the Bohemian churches had been sternly opposed by the Roman
hierarchy. The Council of Constance, which in 1415 burned the heroic Huss
at the stake, also sent a solemn warning to Jacob of Misi, his successor
as lead