Music the Child of Christianity

There is an art which Christianity created almost wholly, asking little of outside aid. Music is that peculiar child. The long-continued vision of Heaven, the struggle of the tones of voice and of instrument to find something worthy of the deep feelings of religion, resulted at last in those mighty chants which formed the mountain springs of our musical Nile. There could have been no music had not depth of feeling come to man. The men who went up to the pagan temples went with no such love, with no sorrow of penitence, with no exultant joy. It was necessary for Jesus Christ to come along and transfer religion from the form to the spirit, and from an "airy nothingness" to a love stronger than life, before hymns like those of Luther and Wesley and Watts could break from the heart. The doctrine of repentance must live in the world awhile before we can have a "Miserere," and the exultant hope of the Christian must come before the mind can invent a "Gloria." — SWING.