p. 79 | A FASHIONABLE CHOIR

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 31, 1869

A FASHIONABLE CHOIR.

[A CORRESPONDENT sends us the following cutting sarcasm on fashionable singing in church, copied from a musical publication. It contains a good deal of truth, as every one familiar with the subject must admit.]

The cock-loft ten feet behind, and ten feet above, the worshipers; then the balustrade to hide the praisers; then the praisers themselves, who come tripping, to their places with exuberant satisfaction and demonstrative delight; then their salutations and greetings, which in any other part of the church would be intolerably irreverent, then the titter—a disease which is incurable in choirs, as it is inseparable from them; then solemn singing with a background of merry smiles, hilarious nudging and characteristic winks, accompanied by appropriate whispers, during prayer or reading of the Holy Bible; then a literary entertainment, or an exchange of penciled notes on all the great questions which interest the human mind—except religion; then to the transformation of the choir loft into a sleeping car, of which the chorister is conductor, who wakes up his passengers when it is time to go to praising again.