from early years been lodged in the memory of nearly every Presbyterian child; it is associated, in the minds of Presbyterians, with deeds of heroic daring and patience, which make it dear to the heart. There can be little fear of mistake, therefore, in placing this Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Assembly among the literary treasures of the language. Influence. The influence of this Catechism upon the opinions, the conduct, the language, the modes of thought and expression, of those who have received it, is beyond that of any other uninspired book which the literature of the race contains. The Authorship.—Of the composition of this Catechism there is no distinct record. It was the last document reported by the Assembly, containing in small compass the perfected fruit of their long deliberation. As it covers the same ground as the Confession of Faith, the presumption is that it was the work of the same Committee, which included several of the ablest men in the Assembly. A Tradition. —There is an interesting tradition in regard to one memorable answer in the Catechism. The important and difficult question, What is God? was assigned to Gillespie of Edinburgh, a man comparatively young, but noted in the Assembly for his gravity of character, as well as for his intellectual power. Feeling the seriousness of the occasion, Gillespie asked the Assembly to join him in prayer for Divine guidance, and began his prayer with these words: "O God, who art a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in thy being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." The Assembly had their auswer. The very words of this solemn invocation, as if inspired by the Spirit himself whom they invoked, were forthwith adopted by the Assembly, and have since formed the answer of all Presbyterians to the grave question, What is God? God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. The Questions Omitted.—It is worthy of note, in regard to this Catechism, that if the Questions are omitted, the Answers, taken by themselves, form a continnous statement, like a chain of closely dependent propositions in Euclid. It has been conjectured that the work was originally composed in this form, and afterwards broken up into Question and Answer. Any intelligent reader, who will make the experiment of writing out a few of the answers, one after the other, without the intervening questions, will be struck with the close logical order and dependence of the whole, and with its perfection as a verbal expression of thought. As a system of doctrine, this Catechism has of course its opponents. But as a model of expression, and as a specimen of standard English, in which character alone it has a place in the present volume, it has defied criticism. The religious Reformation of the sixteenth century has given a wonderful development to a particular form of lyric poetry, Psalms and Hymns, in the two races, English and German, chiefly affected by that movement. NOTE.-Psalms and Hymns are not new in religious worship. They have been used by the Christian Church in all ages, and in heathen as well as in Christian worship. But the particular form of the Psalms and Hymns now in use originated with the Reformation. Mediæval Hymns. - Church music, in the medieval times, was something belonging to the choir, not to the congregation. The choral Hymns were in Latin, and many of them were surpassingly beautiful. Any one who has seen even a picture of the interior of an old cathedral, and has some general idea of its arrangements, can readily imagine the pomp and magnificence of the choral music. Milton has given expression to the feeling which this feature of the old cathedral worship was suited to awaken, in those familiar lines: "But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, As may with sweetness, through mine ear, And bring all heaven before mine eyes." The Change. A leading idea with the Reformers, both in England and on the continent, was to simplify religious worship, and to give to the laity a more active participation in it. Instead, therefore, of the elaborate and multiplied forms of the old established ritual, the Protestant churches adopted a service of a much simpler character, and this always included, of course, the church music. The well-trained choir and the lofty anthem, the old liturgic hymn, and the antiphonal chant, "The notes, with many a winding bout gave way, to a great extent, to hymns in the vernacular, set to the simplest strains, and sung by the whole congregation. How Brought About. — This change, first made by Luther, was followed up by Calvin, and from him found its way into England through the English exiles living at Geneva. Calvin found facilities for making the change in Geneva, in a curious incident which happened just then in France. Marot's Psalms. — Clement Marot,* a valet of the bedchamber to Francis I., was in his day the favorite poet of France, and embellished, in various ways, the French poetry, which had been hitherto little cultivated. He distinguished himself by rondeaux, madrigals, pastorals, ballads, fables, elegies, epitaphs, and poetical versions from the Italian and the Latin. At length, tired of the vanities of profane poetry, he conceived the idea of translating the Psalms of David into French rhymes. As his project was not connected with any intended innovation in public worship, and was of a sentimental rather than of a religious character, it received the assistance of the Professor of Hebrew in the University, and the sanction of the Sorbonne; and the Psalms, or Songs, were dedicated by permission to Francis I., and to the ladies of France. In his dedication to the ladies, whom he had so often addressed in the tender phrases of passion and of compliment, Marot seems anxious to deprecate the raillery which his new kind of verses was likely to incur. In a spirit of religious gallantry he declares that his design is to add to the happiness of his fair readers, by giving them divine hymns instead of love-songs; to inspire their susceptible hearts with a passion in which there is no torment; to banish that fickle and fantastic deity Cupid from the world, and to fill their apartments with the praises, not of "the little god," but of the true Jehovah. The golden age, he says, would then soon be restored. We should see the peasant at his plough, the carman in the streets, and the mechanic in his shop, solacing their toils with psalms and canticles; and the shepherds and shepherdesses reposing in the shade, and teaching the rocks to echo the name of the Creator. Marot's Psalms soon eclipsed his madrigals and sonnets. Psalm-singing became the general mode of domestic merriment. It was the common accompaniment to the fiddle. In the splendid and festive Court of Francis I., of a sudden, nothing was heard but the new Psalms. Psalm-Singing in Geneva. — The sagacions mind of Calvin turned to account this new fashion. Perceiving in it the means of carrying into effect his preconceived scheme, and of immediately popularizing, as well as simplifying, the church music, he forthwith introduced the Psalms of Marot into the congregation at Geneva. Being set to very simple airs, in which the whole congregation could join, they were soon established as a regular branch of the Genevan worship, and formed an appendix to the Genevan Catechism. Psalm-Singing in England. - The Reformers in England followed the example of their continental brethren. It is not a little singular, too, that the first version of the Psalter, used in public worship, to be sung by the whole congregation, was made in English, as in French, by a layman, a courtier, and a court-poet. I refer to Thomas Sternhold. Wyatt and Surrey had both made metrical versions of particu *See Warton's English Poetry, Vol. III., pp. 142–157. lar Psalms. Coverdale, the Bible translator, published, as early as 1539, forty "Ghostly Psalms and Spiritual Songs." But Sternhold's Psalms were the first used in public worship. Sternhold and Hopkins. The first Psalm-Book, or metrical version of the whole Psalter, in a form suited for public worship, that was used in the English Church, was that known as Sternhold and Hopkins. It was so called from the two men chiefly engaged in its production. It was completed in 1562. Thomas Sternhold, 1549, was groom of the robes to Henry VIII., and afterwards to Edward VI. He was a man of serious temperament, and being grieved at the lascivious ballads which prevailed among the courtiers, undertook his version of the Psalms with the laudable design of inducing these gay people of fashion to do as they had done in France, - sing Psalms instead of love-ditties. Sternhold's Psalms, though they did not take with the people of fashion, for whom they were primarily intended, were yet exactly in time for the new religious movement, and were put in England to the same use as were those of Clement Marot in Geneva. Fellow-Laborers.- Sternhold translated only the first fifty-one Psalms. The plan projected by him was carried on by a contemporary and coadjutor, John Hopkins, a Calvinistic clergyman, who graduated at Oxford about 1544. Hopkins translated fiftyeight of the Psalms, distinguished in the earlier editions by his initials. The others were by William Whittingham, a Calvinistic clergyman (who also versified the Decalogue, Creed, Lord's Prayer, and who was the chief author of the Geneva Version of the Bible, etc.), Thomas Norton, the translator of Calvin's Institutes, William Kethe, who was an exile with Knox at Geneva, and Wisdome, Archdeacon of Ely. Publication of the Book. The book thus formed was first published entire in 1562, with this title: "The Whole Book of Psalms collected into English Metre by T. Sternhold, J. Hopkins, and others, conferred with the Ebrue, with apt Notes to sing them withal." These "apt notes" were about forty tunes, of one part only, and one unisonous key, remarkable for a certain uniform sombre gravity, and nearly all being in the same metre. Its Character. — Not one of the parties concerned in this version seems to have had the slightest particle of taste, or feeling of genuine poetry. The language is occasionally elevated and pure, because the stanza is nothing more than the common prose version, with the words so arranged as to make lines and to rhyme. In the main the authors fully justify the language of Campbell, who says, that "with the best intentions and the worst taste, they degraded the spirit of Hebrew Psalmody by flat and homely phraseology; and mistaking vulgarity for simplicity, turned into bathos what they found sublime." Not Obligatory. This metrical Psalter, sometimes called "The Old Version," was not obligatory upon the English Church, and found its way into the Prayer-Book by connivance rather than by formal permission. But once there, it held undisputed sway for nearly two hundred years, and even yet has not entirely disappeared. Tate and Brady. A New Version of the Psalter appeared in 1696, one hundred and thirty-four years after the first appearance of Sternhold and Hopkins. The authors of the "New Version" were Nahum Tate (1652–1715), poet laureate, and Nicholas Brady, D. D. (1659-1726), chaplain to William III., both Irishmen by birth. This was "allowed and permitted to be used" by the King in 1696, and recommended by the Bishop of London in 1698: neither it nor the "Old Version" was ever imposed upon the English Church; their allowance, says Dr. Heylin, 'seems rather to have been a connivance than an approbation." Tate and Brady gained but slowly upon its ancient rival, — not many years ago either was bound up with the various editions of the English Prayer-Book, according to the taste or the interest of the publishers. 66 Rouse's Psalms. - The Scotch Version of the Psalms was made in 1645, by Francis Rouse, an English statesman. Rouse was a member of Parliament, and also of the Westminster Assembly, and was Provost of Eton under the Commonwealth. The Kirk "appointed John Adamson to revise the first forty psalms, Thomas Crawford the second forty, John Row the third, and John Nevey the last thirty." Rouse's Version, thus revised, was "allowed and appointed to be sung" in 1649, and is still exclusively used by the stricter offshoots of the Scotch Kirk. Watts's Psalms and Hymns. The first English Hymn-Book used in public worship was that of Dr. Isaac Watts. There were other hymn writers before his time, but his collection, which came into use about 1715, was the first regular Hymn-Book. NOTE. Until the time of Dr. Watts no such thing as a "HymnBook" was generally known, if we except the Hymns and Songs of |