The following quote comes T. K. Cheyne’s book, The Christian Use of the Psalms, published in 1900.  Cheyne, a critical, Anglican scholar critiques what he sees as a flat, mundane use of the Psalms in Anglican churches.  I do not agree with a number of his comments and suggestions.  However, I found this section telling for several reasons: the value of the Psalms, the value of singing them, how they had already been displaced by this time in several countries, how they have endured in Scotland, and the frank admission of the lack of love of the Bible in his church.

“Have the children of the Puritans retained a sympathetic interest in the Psalter?  Not to care at all for the Psalms would certainly be proof of an impoverished spiritual character ….  Do the non-episcopal churches in other lands still care for the Psalms?  I am afraid that France, Switzerland, and Germany will have to be reconquered by the Psalmists; modern hymns (among the best of which, religiously, are the German) have too largely displaced the fiery old Hebrew Psalms.  But this is not the case in Scotland.  There we still find a greater love for the Psalter than we, with all our daily services, are able to boast of.  Of course, this is partly connected with the greater love of Scottish Protestants for the book of which the Psalter forms a part.  Anglicans are but half-hearted lovers of the Bible.  No wonder, then, that they do not appreciate the Psalms as much as Scottish Presbyterians.  But the inferiority of England to Scotland as regards the Psalter is certainly due in part to the mechanical use of the Psalms which prevails south of the Tweed.”