The student of the music of the Christian Church
naturally turns with curiosity to that one of the ancient
nations whose religion was the antecedent of the Chris-

19



MUSIC IN THE WESTERN CHURCH

tian, and whose sacred literature has famished the
worship of the Church with the loftiest expression of
its trust and aspiration. The music of the Hebrews,
as Ambros says, ^ was divine service, not art." ^ Many
modem writers have assumed a high degree of perfection
in ancient Hebrew music, but only on sentimental
grounds, not because there is any evidence to support
such an opinion. There is no reason to suppose that
music was further developed among the Hebrews than
among the most cultivated of their neighbors. Their
music, like that of the ancient nations generally, was
entirely subsidiary to poetic recitation and dancing; it
was unharmonic, simple, and inclined to be coarse and
noisy. Although in general use, music never attained
so great honor among them as it did among the Greeks.
We find in the Scriptures no praises of music as a nour-
isher of morality, rarely a trace of an ascription of
magical properties. Although it had a place in mili-
tary operations and at feasts, private merry-makings,
etc., its chief value lay in its availability for religious
purposes. To the Hebrews the arts obtained signifi-
cance, only as they could be used to adorn the courts of
Jehovah, or could be employed in the ascription of
praise to him. Music was to them an efficient agent to
excite emotions of awe, or to carry more directly to the
heart the rhapsodies and searching admonitions of psalm-
ista and prophets.
