Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/38

26 legacy of a hundred marks. His psalms were originally composed for his own 'godly solace,' and sung by him to his organ. His young master, Edward VI, chanced to overhear them, and invited Sternhold to repeat them in his presence. The first edition of nineteen psalms was dedicated to the King. Wood says that Sternhold had musical notes set to the Psalms, and hoped that the courtiers would sing them instead of their amorous and obscene songs. His psalms are godly ballads in the older form of common measure, known as the Chevy Chace measure, with only two rhymes. It was not till 1562 that the complete Psalter was published by John Daye. It was some years later before it assumed its final shape. Sternhold himself is responsible for forty versions. John Hopkins, who seems to have been a Gloucestershire clergyman and schoolmaster, wrote sixty, which are also in common metre, but with four rhymes to a stanza. William Whittingham was the scholar of the company. He had fled from the Marian persecution to Geneva, where he married Calvin's sister and succeeded Knox in the pastorate of the exiled English congregation. He had a prominent share in the preparation of the Genevan Bible. On his return to England he was made Dean of Durham. During his tenure of office he protested against the wearing of habits, and is said to have destroyed the image of Cuthbert, but he has the merit of having introduced metrical canticles into the Cathedral services. The Old Version has twelve psalms of Whittingham's. 'Few books have had so long a career of influence.' Psalm-singing soon came to be regarded as the most divine part of public worship. When a psalm was read the heads of the worshippers were covered, but all men sat bare-headed when the psalm was sung.

Thomas Mace, in his Music's Monument, 1676, speaks of psalm-singing in York Minster before the sermon, during the siege of 1644. 'When that vast concording unity of the whole congregational chorus came thundering in, even so as it made the very ground shake under us, oh, the unutterable ravishing soul's delight! in the which I was so transported and wrapped up in high contemplations, that there was no room left in my whole man, body, soul, and spirit, for anything below divine and heavenly raptures; nor could there possibly be anything to which that very singing might be truly compared, except the right apprehension or conceiving of that glorious and miraculous quire, recorded in the Scriptures at the dedication of the Temple.'