The singers, previously prepared to carry the desired alteration
into effect, proceeded in their singing without pausing at the conclusion
of the line. The white-haired officer of the church with the full power
of his voice read on through the second line, until the loud notes of the
collected body of singers overpowered his attempt to resist the progress
of improvement. The deacon, deeply mortified at the triumph of the musical
reformation, then seized his hat and retired from the meeting-house in
tears." His conduct was censured by the church, and he was for a time
deprived of partaking in the communion, for "absenting himself from the
public services of the Sabbath;" but in a few weeks the unhouselled deacon
was forgiven, and never attempted to "line" again.
Though the opponents of "lining" were victorious in the larger villages and
towns, in smaller parishes, where there were few hymn-books, the lining
of the psalms continued for many years. Mr. Hood wrote, in 1846, the
astonishing statement that "the habit of lining prevails to this day over
three-fourths of the United States." This I can hardly believe, though I
know that at present the practice obtains in out of the way towns with poor
and ignorant congregations. The separation of the lines often gives a very
strange meaning to the words of a psalm; and one wonders what the Puritan
children thought when they heard this lino of contradictions that Hood
points out:--
"The Lord will come and He will not,"
and after singing that line through heard the second line,--
"Keep silence, but speak out.
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