Connecticut western news., 1899-09-07

| and life. Music ought to rush from the audience like the water from rock clear, bright, sparkling. If all the oth- CT part of the church service is dull, do not have the music dull. With so many thrilling things to sing about, away with all drawling and stupidity. There is nothing that makes me so nervous as to sit in a pulpit and look off on an audience with their eyes three-fourths closed and their lips | almost shut, mumbling the praises of God. During one of my journeys I preached to an audience of 2,O0O or 5000 people, and all the music they made together did not equal one skylark! People do not sleep at a coronation; do not let us sleep when we come to a Saviour's crowning. In order to a proper discharge of this duty, let us stand up, save as age or | weakness or fatigue excuse us. Seated in an easy pew we cannot do this duty i half so well as when upright we throw | our whole body into 1t. Let our song be like an exclamation of victory. You have right to sing; do not surrender your prerogative. If In the performance of your duty, or the attempt at it, you should lose your place in the musical scale and be one c below when you ought to be one c above, or you should come in half bar behind. we will ex- cuse you! Still, 1t is better to do as Paul says, and sing with the spirit and the understanding also"
 Congregational Music. Again, I remark church music must be congregational. This opportunity must be brought down within the range of the whole audience. A song that the worshipers cannot sing is of no more use to them than a sermon In Choctaw. What an easy kind of church it must be where the minister does all the preaching, and the elders all the praying, and the choir all the singing! There are but very few churches where there are two hun dred and forty and five singing men and singing women"
 In some churches 1t is almost consid- cred disturbance If a man let out his voice to full compass, and the people get up on tiptoe and look over be- tween the spring hats and wonder what that man Is making all that noise about. In Syracuse in Presbyterian church there was one member wko came to me when I was the pastor of another church in that city anI told me his trouble-how that as he per sisted in singing on the Sabbath day a committee, made up of rle session and the choir, had come to ask him if he would not just please to keep still! You have no right to sing. Jonathan Edwards used to set apart whole days for singing. Let us wake up to this duty. Let us sing alone, sing ln our families, sing in our schools, sing in our churches.
 Heavens National Airs.
 I want to rouse you to unanimity in Christian song that has ever yet been exhibited. Come, now; clear your throats and get ready for this duty or you will never hear the end of this. l never shall forget hearing a French man sing the "Marseillaise" on the Champs Elysees, Paris, just before the battle of Sedan in 1870. I never saw
  he sang that national air, oh, how the Frenchmen shouted! Have you ever in an English assemblage heard a band play God Save the QueenY If you have, you know something about the enthusiasm of a national air. Now, l tell you that these songs we sing Sab- bath by Sabbath are the national airs of the kingdom of heaven, and if you do not learn to sing them here, how do you ever expect to sing the song of Moses and the Lamb? I should not be surprised at all if some of the best anthems of heaven were made up of some of the best songs of earth. May God increase our reverence for Chris tian psalmody and keep us from dis gracing 1t by our indifference and fri volity. When Cromwell's army went into battle, he stood at the head of it one day and gave out the long meter dox- ology to the tune of the "Old Hun dredth." and that great host, company by company, regiment by regiment, d. vision by division, joined in the dox- ology:
 Praise God, from wkcm all blessings flow;
 Praise him, all creatures here below;
 Praise him above, ye heavenly host;
 Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. And while the sang they marched, 1 and while they marched they fought, | and while they fought they got the | victory. Oh, men and women of Jesus | Christ, let us go into all our conflicts | singing the praises of God, and then, instead of falling back, as we often | do, from defeat to defeat, we will be | marching on from victory to victory. l "Gloria Tn Excelsis' Is written over many organs. Would that by our ap- preciation of the goodness of God, and the mercy of Christ, and the grandeur of heaven, we could have "Gloria In Excelsis" written over all our souls. "Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as It was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amenr'
 
 A Grasshopper Story.
 A live grasshopper will eat a dead | 0rasshODDer A Missouri farmer mixed |