critics, on the use of the term "Author," on the title-page or elsewhere, of this or any other book from the same pen. If none can write himself author who cannot point to some achievement in original, creative composition, I am none. If I could think of another term that should not look affected or pedantic, I would use it. Failing any such, I use the word in its accepted conventional sense, conventionally comprehensive, comprehensively conventional. PRESTWOOD, October, 1871. F. J. CONTENTS. PREFATORY. I. IN THE BEGINNING, AND AT THE END JOB XXXVIII. 6; REV. XIV. 2. II. JUBAL'S INVENTION GENESIS IV. 21. III. ORGANS-BEYOND THE MEANING, AND THE I CHRON. XVI. 41, 42; 2 CHRON. V. 12, 13. EXOD. XIX. 16, SQ.; JUDGES VII. 18, SQ.; I COR. XV. 25. IX. HAVING EARS, BUT HEARING NOT JEREMIAH V. 21. PAGE I 17 4I 50 72 86 J13 142 BIBLE MUSIC. I. In the Beginning, and at the End. Job xxxviii. 7; Rev. xiv. 2. HERE was man the question came by WHE way of answer from out of the whirlwindwhen the foundations of the earth were fashioned, and the corner-stone of it laid? Man as yet was not. But then was the time "when the morning stars sang together," and creation thrilled at the melody of sound. * * Creation thrilled at the melody of speech-these words, or words to this effect, close a paragraph in a sermon by the late Henry Melvill, descriptive of the first articulate utterance of newly-created man. Congregations thrilled at the melody of Canon Melvill's voice, in the rich fulness of its mellow prime; and no listener of those days can well have forgotten the sensational effect of breath-drawing on the part of the people. 2 CHURCH-GOERS' SIGH OF RELIEF. "From harmony, from heavenly harmony, When nature underneath a heap when the climax, or grand climacteric, of a paragraph was at length reached by the preacher, and the culminating effect, the terminus ad quem, was arrived at, so that the hushed expectants could breathe freely again, and prepare for a fresh start. One is reminded, in the retrospect, of certain words in one of Corneille's prefaces, where he speaks of un certain frémissement dans l'assemblée, qui marquait une curiosité merveilleuse, et un redoublement d'attention, etc. The churchgoer's sigh of relief is by the satirical associated with the full stop of the sermon; as where Mr. Thackeray describes the effect of a display of pianoforte fireworks, at the conclusion of which the drawing-room listeners give "a heave and a gasp of admiration—a deep-breathing gushing sound, such as you hear at church when the sermon comes to a full stop." And some vague echo of which may have been sounding in Lord Cockburn's ears when he described the fire at the Tron Church in 1824, and the burning of the clock-the minute hand dropping suddenly and silently down to the perpendicular at a quarter before twelve at night: "When the old time-keeper's function was done, there was an audible sigh over the spectators. . . . Scott, whose father's pew had been in the Tron Church, lingered a moment, and said, with a profound heave, 'Eh, sirs! mony a weary, weary sermon hae I heard beneath that steeple!" No listener to London's Golden Lecturer sighed after that sort. The listening was more like that of the Commons to Pitt at his best, as Dr. Croly has described it "deeply silent but where some chord was so powerfully touched that it gave a universal thrill. Again those involuntary bursts of admiration were as suddenly hushed by the eagerness of the House to listen, and the awful importance |