tradition. Nor did the fancy of Milton take too bold a flight when
it pleased itself with the idea that our first parents, taught by
the carols of the birds in the garden of Eden, raised their voices in
tuneful notes of praise to the Creator of all, when they walked forth
in the cool of the day to meet their God before the fall. But this is
certain, that one of our Lord's last acts of social worship on earth
was to sing a hymn with his disciples. Few, therefore, can be slow to
understand, that if Christ and his disciples broke forth in holy song,
immediately after the solemnities of the Last Supper, and just before
the Shepherd was smitten, and the sheep were scattered; and if Paul
and Silas sung praises unto God in their prison-house, congregational
worship may always be the better for such helps. Add to these
examples, the apostolical exhortation to the merry hearted to sing
psalms, and the apostolical descriptions of the choral strains which
resound in the courts of heaven, and we cannot but feel certain, that
the services of the Christian church were cheered from the earliest
times by hymns and psalms. "Those Nazarenes sing hymns to Christ,"
said Pliny, in contempt. We thank him for recording the fact. The
words of the Te Deum were composed by a native of Gaul, (for the use
probably of one of the churches on the Rhone, or of the Alps) about
the third century; and at the same period, men, women, youths of both
sexes, and even children joined in the psalmody of the sanctuaries,
in such cordial and harmonious unison, that a father of the church has
well compared the sound to the loud, but not discordant, noise of many
waves beating against the sea shore.

At the time of the Reformation, sacred music, which had begun to
run wild, was brought back to its first principles. The melodies of
religious worship were rendered more heart-touching, by being set to
words in the vernacular tongues, which every body could understand.