dragged it down. Science will demonstrate the fundamental truths of revelation, and will settle the meaning of it.

The religious intuitions of the soul have been the salvation of the world, but they cannot long be its only rest. Faith in them alone forms only a resting-place in the soul's march. They need outward guides. They need some common force which shall control individual eccentricity, and correct individual inertia or prejudice. A man will not rest long in the simple utterance, "It is true, because I know it is true." He must go on to demonstrate what he knows. And this demonstration science is beginning.

If we are Christians we may, then, well be hopeful and fearless ones. We may reckon all things as ours, may know no enemy but sin, and hail every result of earnest thought, not as complete in itself, but as one of the steps up which the aspiring race shall mount to grander heights.

In conclusion we would remark, that the work of Spencer referred to is not mainly theological, but will present the latest and broadest generalizations of science. And we would commend to our readers this author, too little known among us, as at once one of the clearest of teachers and one of the wisest and most honorable of opponents.

Hymns and Choirs: or, The Matter and the Manner of the Service of Song in the House of the Lord. By AUSTIN PHELPS and EDWARDS A. PARK, Professors at Andover, and DANIEL L. FURBER, Pastor at Newton. Andover: Warren F. Draper. 1860. 12mo. pp. 425.

LIKE the Septem contra Christum of the "Essays and Reviews," the three authors of the acute and learned treatise on "Hymns and Choirs" disclaim collusion or mutual responsibility. They have each a special department in the triune composition, and neither stands voucher for the views of his associates. Mr. Phelps writes only on "Hymnology, an Expression of the Religious Life," and gives the history, the

classification, and the criterion of fitness of hymns in public worship. Dr. Park confines himself to the text of hymns, or rather to changes in the text, and sets forth, with extraordinary ingenuity, the various causes, methods, and results of the alteration of the sacred songs. Mr. Furber discusses church-music, and tells us what choirs are, and what they ought to be. His criticism is more trenchant than that of his associates, and his suggestions are more positive and practical. His part of the volume, too, is less apologetic than that of the Andover Professors. The ulterior purpose of the volume is evidently to vindicate the Andover hymn-book, and to defend it against the attacks of unfriendly reviewers. How far these attacks were just we cannot say, having seen neither the book itself nor the strictures upon it. But we suppose, as in the war of the Dictionaries, local prejudices and personal interests have a large share in the quarrel. Fortunately, in the case of the hymn-books, there are so many claimants and rivals in the field, that the contest cannot be narrowed to a prolonged and tiresome duel. There are many alternatives; and he who must choose between Webster or Worcester need not take the hymn-book either of New York, or New Haven, or Andover, but may reject the whole, and make one for himself, if he choose, with all the latest improvements. The field is free.

This liberty of hymn-book making is one of which our Unitarian connection has availed itself to a remarkable degree. The centrifugal force so much lamented among us is more manifest in this way than in any other. Whatever unity there may be in the spirit of our religious song, no one can accuse the Unitarian body of liturgical uniformity. Each effort to realize the liturgical idea only increases the diversity. It is probable that no sect, in proportion to its numbers and its age, ever produced so many hymn-books as the Unitarians of America. With less than three hundred churches in its connection, the Unitarian body has probably more hymn-books than the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian bodies united. In a ministry of less than twenty years, we have found and used in the pulpits of Unitarian churches no less than eighteen different collections of hymns, of American compilation;

and if to these are added the separate collections for the use of Sunday-schools, Conference-meetings, and domestic services, the number will probably be more than doubled. Two or three of these collections have gone out of use. Belknap's ancient volume is known no longer; Dabney's has disappeared; and Sewall would hardly recognize his didactic intention in the fervid lyrics which have intruded so thickly among his rhymed Christian ethics. But at least a score of different books, in the Unitarian churches of England and America, continue to direct and interpret the song of the sanctuary.

These different collections are not, of course, wholly unlike. They have many hymns in common. Some hymns will probably be found in all of them, and a few perhaps be found in all with the same form, the same stanzas, the same lines, and the same words. This number, however, we think, is small. Of a collection like the Cheshire, containing in all nine hundred and eight hymns, not a dozen, we might almost say not half a dozen, can be found in all the other collections with exactly the same length and the same words. Each collection will have some hymns not found in any of the others; and each collection will have some common hymns which it has ventured to alter, either in length, style, or doctrine. Even where a new collection professes, as in the case of those in use in the West Church in Boston, and in All-Souls' Church in New York, to be only a new edition of a book long used there, it is in reality a new compilation, different in tone and compass, not less than in particulars more radical. In vain, in many of the collections, do we look for favorite hymns; and, good as many seem in occasional use, probably no one of this score of hymn-books is quite satisfactory to any pastor, unless he was himself its maker, and has in it pride or copyright.

There are advantages as well as disadvantages in this variety of hymn-books. We do not propose to discuss either at this time, but only to say some words on what is the most provoking annoyance in this diversity, the alteration and the mutilation of hymns; the topic which Professor Park has considered with such fulness. The question of right and wrong, in regard to this alteration, the Professor does not answer as

clearly as he states it; and, in fact, he leaves us at the end of his twenty-four sections rather in doubt concerning his view of the morality of the process. His last conclusion, that "the original text should be maintained, unless there are imperative reasons for abandoning it," is very reasonable; but, unfortunately, he allows so much latitude to individual judgment, that very slight preferences may claim to be "imperative reasons." The example of his own "Sabbath HymnBook" permits changes in many ways; and he is able to show a multitude of necessities which compel improvement upon the original text. One kind of change, very frequent and very important, he hardly touches in his survey, — where the doctrine of the hymn is altered. He might plead, in excuse for the omission, that he wrote for the Orthodox, and not for any heretical body.

It is not, perhaps, easy to lay down any general and unvarying principle concerning the alteration of hymns. The exceptions will be numerous enough to spoil the rule; and the antecedent difficulty of determining the true text of hymns long in use makes it almost impossible rigidly to observe any rule. Few who have not made the attempt are aware how perplexing is the task of verifying the original words even of the best-known sacred lyrics. It is not the text of the old books, in use half a century ago, which is to decide the question, for this custom of changing the text is not of recent date. It has even, like most abuses and evils, a Biblical sanction. King David has also to answer for this sin, unless we suppose the Second Book of Samuel to be posterior to the composition of the eighteenth Psalm, in which case the sin belongs to the compiler of that volume. The copyist, in either case, has taken numerous liberties with the original text, and there are discrepancies in idea as well as in word. So, too, the fourteenth and fifty-third Psalms, identical in most of their phrases, differ in the important particular of the name of Deity, and of the spirit and work assigned to Deity. The one is a Jehovistic, the other an Elohistic Psalm. Assuming the fourteenth, where God is called "Jehovah," and is said to be the "refuge" of the wretched, to be of earlier date than the fifty-third, where God is called "Elohim," and

is said to "mock" evil-doers, it is evident that the borrower here took the liberty of adapting the earlier Psalm to his own idea and exigency. Other instances of similar alteration may be found in passages of the Psalms, as in the seventieth, borrowed from the fortieth, where the name of God is changed, and in the one hundred and eighth, borrowed from the fiftyseventh, where "Adonai" becomes "Jehovah."

With such Biblical authority, the alteration of hymns seems warranted from the start. Shall we err in following the example of the first writers of sacred song? Have we not David as an advocate here as much as in his cursings, which in our war season are found so fit and convenient? And can we wonder that the first hymnists of the Church felt that they might safely, in their rhymed paraphrases, adjust Scripture to the needs of the age, or that the later Reformers, in their translation of these Greek and Latin chants, should add new "improvements"? This habit of alteration is of long standing, and has fastened itself not only to translations and paraphrases, but to new impressions of verses comparatively reOne who should undertake to edit a critical edition of Dr. Watts would find himself, in the mass of various readings, hardly less embarrassed than Tischendorf among his NewTestament manuscripts. We have known a whole evening to be spent in discussing the original words of one of Montgomery's lines, with no one of the dozen disputants any wiser at the end. And who shall verify the primitive lines of that large class of hymns, comprehended by the mysterious and baffling title of "Anonymous"? Who shall tell the true reading of these stanzas, which, so far as we can know, "happened" into being, and never had an author, these foundlings of sacred literature, which can show their parentage by no trace of likeness? In half, perhaps in two thirds, of the favorite and familiar hymns, that which is supposed to be the true reading has been changed from the text as originally printed; and to go back to the original would seem profanation. When the Missionary Hymn of Heber was printed in the "Sabbath Hymn-Book," from the original manuscript, with so small a change as the word "shall" to "can," the editors were compelled to restore the "shall" in a second