Nevin on Dancing in Worship
James Dodson
DANCING IN WORSHIP.
There is one argument—that drawn from the analogy of dancing—the consideration of which the Professor has reserved to the last. Why? Was it that the plausible philosophizing at the outset, respecting the light of nature showing no difference in the character of musical tones arising from the mode of production, might be allowed to have its full effect, so that the weakness of the rejoinder here might be overlooked? It looks like it. The attempt is to show no analogy, but it is a failure. He tells us of “changes in manners and customs, and in the habits of society.” “The religious kiss is as rare as the religious dance; and yet the apostle was not speaking figuratively when he wrote, ‘Greet ye one another with an holy kiss.’ We have come to believe that shaking hands in a kindly and loving spirit discharges the obligation.” The allusion is rather unfortunate for his purpose. Promiscuous kissing would indeed be far from our Western notions of propriety; but unhappily, we must say, promiscuous dancing is greatly favoured and much practised by many who stand well in the religious world. Then he tells us, “Shaking hands may be meetly substituted for the holy ‘kiss;’ but nothing can take the place of music.” Be it so; but we are under no necessity to look for a substitute. Can we not have music without instruments? Yes, and the very best of music too, for the best judges of the art will admit that there is no music equal to that of human voices trained to sing in harmony. It is said there is no music in the world equal to that of the imperial choir in St. Petersburgh, where no instrument is used. Every argument adduced on behalf of instruments will apply with equal force to dancing—some, perhaps, with even a little more. The light of nature can show no more difference in the moral character of the performances of heel and toe on the one side and those of the fingers on the other, than it can in the case between the fingers and the organs of articulation. Graceful gestures, motions, evolutions are pleasing to the eye, just as sweet sounds are to the ear. Dancing may express, elicit, intensify emotions of a joyous kind. The professor himself tells us, “To the Jews, and other Eastern nations, dancing was the natural expression of joy, even when the joy was religious.” And again, “There is a natural tendency to express our joyous emotions by bodily gestures.” We may be told that it is not ‘strictly prohibited’ in the Second Commandment—that it belongs to prophecy and not to priesthood—that it was practised of old with divine ap-
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probation, and nowhere forbidden in the New Testament. On the contrary, we find something like an approach to an exemplification of it—and that is more than can be said for the use of instruments—in the case of the lame man cured by miracle, referred to by the Professor, who, “having received strength in his feet and ankle bones, entered into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God.” In these days of rapid changes in opinion, we may not have long to wait until we find issuing from the press a pamphlet, by some person of note, with some such title as this—‘Dancing: its Place in the Worship of God the same under all Dispensations.’ The writer may push his philological researches beyond Greek and Hebrew, into the kindred Syriac and Arabic. Curiously enough, Gesenius gives as his third meaning of zamar, the word we have been saying so much about, “to dance,” with a reference to a cognate Arabic word as his sole reason. True, the meaning is somewhat doubtful, but it has fully as good ground to stand on as Schleusner’s making psalmos sometimes mean a musical instrument. If the Church may be converted into a concert-hall, with a company of hired professional performers sitting in a gallery appropriated to themselves, who may have been engaged all the evenings of the week before in some drinking saloon (we have heard of a brass band in a church during the hours of worship)—an orchestra in fact—it surely would not be a great step in advance to have a stage erected, and a corps de ballet introduced. Western ideas of propriety would revolt at promiscuous kissing, as a holy or religious exercise; but there are comparatively few who feel shocked at the practice of promiscuous dancing in other places—why, then, not have it in the church, and call it holy? We have not long since seen a statement to the effect, that some secular newspapers in the United States of America, have been already putting the question, whether the time has not come for the introduction of the ‘religious dance’ as a part of worship. To do Professor Wallace no injustice, the tone of his remarks on the subject seem to indicate that he is by no means averse to the idea; that he is holding the door ajar; and that, if the manners and customs and habits of society should come to countenance the thing—say, to the extent they already favour instrumental music—he could see no manner of objection. Mr. Sinclair, according to the published report of his speech in the Assembly of ’72, was a little more explicit. He would go in for indulging the negro with the religious dance, of course to the accompaniment of the banjo. His reason for this is the peculiar temperament of the race, that is, as we presume, their comparative childishness. But on this ground the ‘children of a larger growth’ in our day, white as well as black, seem fast qualifying for having the same measure of indulgence extended to all. Seriously, both Professor Wallace and Mr. Sinclair have so many elements of manhood in them that
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we would greatly prefer to see them seeking to have themselves and others trained to put away all childish things, that they might come “unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”