Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/154

 Trumpet, never in those airy mosques of the silent East have I heard the faintest echo of thy shrillings. Nor did the Puritans, I suppose, ever hear it in their days.

No doubt the stained glass windows would have been tabooed by them as was the organ, which was brought over with the church. Music, like our modern brass-trumpet philanthropy, shocked their sense of piety. They could not associate it with worship. It interfered with the digestion of the soul—it promoted impiety. If the organ, which was subsequently restored, is the one I heard, than I am, too, a Puritan. And the fact that it has now an electric action, does not make it less objectionable to those who seek peace in the House of God. I may be wrong, foolish, narrow in my idea of worship; I may not have an ear for music: but I submit that no two of our poor jaded senses can be occupied simultaneously with equally good purpose and effect. The shrill cymbals of an Oriental church may tear the ear, but they do not reach the soul;