hymn might serve as a memoria technica for the remembrance of the course of services; but we would ask with much deference, whether the grasping of some one marked fact or saying in the services of the particular Sunday, might not have suggested a fitter hymn for the great congregation? The services of any Sunday in the year will be found to furnish some such facts and sayings, of which advantage might be taken. The Church needs, it is true, many new hymns; and we cannot but think that, if the editors of hymn-books had made this generally known, our stock would have been by this time vastly improved. It is hardly to our credit, that the very best writers of English hymns, properly so called, have not been of our communion. Watts, Doddridge, and C. Wesley have never yet been surpassed; though Toplady, Lyte, and Miss Charlotte Elliott certainly approach them nearly. The Presbyterians of Scotland, though no book can be more meagre and dreary than that which the Established Church has put forth for the use of her members, boast of one of the best of modern hymn-writers, Horatius Bonar.

We have gained much by the practice of translating the hymns of the ancient Church; and among those who have contributed the most to this gain, is Dr. Mason Neale. But while we gladly acknowledge this, there can be no question that there is something to be set on the other side. The spirit introduced into our hymnology by translations is often un-English, and the diction and versification of the hymns stiff and crabbed. And some ideas, which gave no offence in their original Latin, become unwelcome and even shocking in an English dress. We hear "Sanguis Christi, inebria me," without a painful feeling but its equivalent in English would distress any reverent mind.

An English hymn should be plain in diction, chastened in imagery, fervent in sentiment, humble in its approach to God. Its lines should be cunningly wrought, so that they may easily find their way to the ear of the simplest, and stay unbidden in his memory. It should be metrically faultless; so departing at times from perfect uniformity, as to render reason for the departure, and give a charm to its usual strictness. They have done our hymns an ill service, who have gone about to alter trochaic feet into iambic, because the metre was iambic.

The making of hymns requires more of the fancy than of the imagination: but the fancy must keep her bounds, and speak not above a whisper. A hymn, as it must not be "fanciful," so neither must it be sublime: as it must not be without thought, so neither must it require and challenge thought. The soul of the worshipper is greater than the hymn which he sings: the hymn must not set itself up above him. Hymns are founded on the divine Word and the divine Life. Both should be approached reverently. God's word in the Scripture,

God's work in the soul, are not to be caricatured by big and airy sounds. We may take the text which has struck us, and mould it into a hymn, but we must use it fairly: not distort it, not set it to work in regions where it finds no reference. We may choose the aspect of faith or hope or love which seems best to us, but we must sit at the feet of the Great Inward Teacher, and be not false to our own experience; we must not exaggerate; we must curb the licence of metre and antithesis. He who is to lead the praises of the Church, must speak the mind of the Church.

There are few hymns indeed which come up to the highest standard. A very good test of approach to it, is being everywhere known. For it is the very object of a hymn to get carried into the mind of the Church, and to serve as the acknowledged vehicle of heavenward thoughts and strains. And this will ordinarily be done, not by hymns imported through translation from other churches, but by those which are of native growth: not by the elaborate and artificial, but by the simple and natural: not by those which are made out with stop-gaps, and patches of commonplace, but by those where every word is in its place, and cannot be disarranged without loss to the whole.

We have said nothing in the present article of the tunes which accompany these collections of hymns. Most of them have been arranged by musicians of eminence, and challenge, at all events, strict musical criticism. This the tunes in "Hymns Ancient and Modern" have met with at the hands of a musical correspondent of the Record, and apparently have not come very well out of the process. We hope that the whole subject may, at a future time, be treated in this journal.

W

HEN a Dutch deputy, at the anniversary meeting last year of one of the English religious societies, asked how it was that his second speech about Holland and its Church was heard with greater manifestations of sympathy than his first, he received the answer, "Because the first time you assumed that we were acquainted with the state of things in your country, whereas, to tell the truth, we knew next to nothing about them."

The writer has often experienced the same thing when conversing about his native land with friends from Great Britain. Though we are next-door neighbours, trace our origin in great part to the same Saxon root, profess the same religion, and cultivate the same tastes, yet, owing chiefly to the smallness of our country and the limited circle within which our language is spoken or read, our present history and condition I believe are as little known in England as are the history and condition of Lapland. Consequently, it is only to be expected that Englishmen, when their attention is now and then drawn to this terra ignota, should often pass condemnatory verdicts upon us where we ought to be praised, or encomiums where we have deserved rebuke. And so I did not marvel when a friend in England wrote me, that in the Westminster Review for July, 1865 (p. 225), a sentence occurs like this:-"A conclusion which shows the Church of the Netherlands to be the most free of any of the regularly constituted

churches of Christendom." Such an assertion could have been written only by one unacquainted with the history of our Church during the last fifty years, unless indeed party spirit had so blinded his mind as to render him unable to distinguish between anarchy and liberty.

I gladly comply with the honouring request of the Editor of this Review to write an article which in some measure may enable the British public to judge for themselves in how far the above-quoted sentence from the Westminster Review is correct. It is evident that the limits of an article like this cannot admit of an elaborate and detailed account of the events which have combined to bring our Church to its present state; but the main drift of these events was so conspicuous, that even a superficial glance at them will suffice to show what must be their results upon the Church which they directly influenced. To guard myself against partiality, I will, as much as in my power, abstain from indulging in my own reflections, and simply recite the facts as they may be proved from authentic records and historical documents, which I shall quote where it may be required.

And first let me give a few statistics.

The population of the

Kingdom of the Netherlands amounted, according to the census of 1859, to 3,309,128 persons. Of these 2,007,026 were Protestants, 1,234,486 Roman Catholics, 63,790 Israelites, 3,826 unknown, including a few Greeks and Armenians.

Of the two million and seven thousand Protestants, by far the greater majority-viz., 1,828,365-belong to the Reformed Calvinistic Church, the official name of which is "The Netherlands Reformed Church." Connected with it are the French or Walloon Church, with 9,803 members; the English Presbyterians, with 374; and the Scotch Presbyterians, with 97.

The other Protestant bodies which exist under the shade of this "great church" number, comparatively speaking, but few members. There are the Christian Separatist Reformed (who seceded from the Netherlands Reformed Church in 1832), numbering 65,728; the Lutherans, 64,539; the Mennonites (who hold adult baptism, but with sprinkling), 42,162; the Arminians, or Remonstrants, 5,326; the English Episcopalians, 575; the Moravians, 331: total, 178,661.

It appears from these statistics that the number of all the Protestant dissenters together is less than 0.110 of the members of the Netherlands Reformed Church, and that the latter comprises more than one-half of the whole population of the kingdom. On account of this numerical majority, as well as of its history since the time of the Reformation, this Church may rightly be called the Dutch National Church. It is, with the exception of those in the Roman Catholic provinces bordering upon Belgium, in possession of all the cathedrals

and parochial churches which the Roman Catholic Church possessed before the Reformation. It is a thoroughly presbyterian body, and was for two centuries-up till 1795-the Established Church of the Dutch Republic. It was that Dutch Church which, as it had triumphantly overcome its bloody struggle of eighty years with Rome and priestridden Spain, faithfully and liberally offered support, shelter, and protection to all from other countries who sought refuge in the Netherlands against the persecutions of the same enemy. Englan and Scotland remember this, as well as the Protestants of France.

In those days-that is, before 1795-this Reformed Church was not merely the privileged, but exclusively the Church of the country. It is true, other denominations, as for instance the Romanists, Lutherans, Mennonites, and Arminians, were tolerated, and, together with the Jews, enjoyed more liberty in our country than was usually allowed to them in other countries. But still, so close was the union between Church and State, that only the Reformed Church was in possession of all civil rights, the members of the other denominations being excluded from the civil offices in the State.

This state of things was put an end to by the influence of the French Revolution. The separation of the Church from the State was publicly proclaimed on the 18th of August, 1796. The ecclesiastical possessions, from which the salaries of the Reformed clergy, &c., had been paid, were secularized, and became national property.

of great confusion and humiliation, alike in Church and in State, now ensued. In 1806, Napoleon sent us his brother to reign over us as king. In 1810 he incorporated our country as a province into his own empire. In 1813 we were delivered from the French yoke. Its reimposition was for ever prevented by the victory at Waterloo.

The last Stadtholder of our Republic, William the Fifth of Orange, had in 1795 fled to England, where he died. The people, rejoicing at their liberation from the French tyranny, and remembering how much they were indebted for their national existence to the Orange family, enthusiastically and unanimously proclaimed the late Stadtholder's son as their king. He ascended the throne in 1814, under the title of William I. The bitter experiences of the past had decisively put a stop to the former political discord, and the animosities of party spirit. William was gifted with extraordinary administrative skill. He at once directed his attention to the Reformed Church, which, though nominally separated from the State, was yet in fact the church of the people. It lacked a central board of administration, and this the King set about supplying. On the 7th of January, 1816, the King, after having taken advice from a “consulting commission," which partly consisted of politicians, partly of ecclesiastics, granted the introduction of a set of rules, called