The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1899-09-08
A SERVICE OF SONG.
Rev. DR.. Talmage's Sermon on
Music in Religion.
The Best Music Rendered Under
TrOubIe-God Meant All to
Sing-The Proper Music
for n Church.
copyright, Louis Klopsch. 1891
uvaaIlntau


His ideas will he received with interest
by all who love to lift their voices in
praise in the Lords house. The text
is Nehemiah 1907: And they had
two hundred forty and five singing men
and singing women"
The best music has been rendered un-
der trouble. The first duet that know
anything of was given by Paul and
Silas when they sang praises to God
and the prisoners heard them. The
Scotch Covenanters, bounded by the
dogs of persecution, sang the psalms
of David with more spirit than they
have ever since been rendered. The
captives in the text had music left in
them, and | declare that if they could
find, amid all their trials. two hundred
and forty and five singing men and
singing women then in this day of
Gospel sunlight and free from all per-
secution there ought to be great
multitude of men and women willing
to sing the praises of God. All our
churches need arousal on this subject.
Those who can sing must throw their
souls into the exercise, and those who
cannot sing must learn how, and it
shall be heart TO heart, voice to voice,
hymn to hymn, anthem to anthem,
and the music shall swell jubilant with
Thanksgiving and tremulous with par
don.
Have YOU ever noticed the construc-
ton of the human throat as indicative
of what God means Us to do with it?
In only an ordinary throat and lungs
there are ii direct muscles and 30 in
direct muscles that can produce very
great variety Of sounds. What does
that mean? 1t means that you should
sing. DO you suppose that God, who
giyes us such a musical instrument as
that, intends US to keep it shut? Sup
pose some great tyrant should get pos
Session of the musical instruments of
the world and should lock up the or
gan of Westminster abbey, and the
organ of Lucerne, and the organ at
Haarlem, and the organ at Freiburg,
and all the other great musical instru-
ments of the world. You would call
such a man as that a monster, and yet
you are more wicked it, with the human
voice, musical instrument of more
wonderful adaptation than all the mu-
steal instruments that man ever ere
ated, you shut it against the praise of
God.
Let those refuse to sing
Who never knew our God,
But children of the heavenly King
Should speak their joys abroad.
Music seems to have been born in the
soul of the natural world. The omnipo-
tent voice with which God command
ed the world into being seems to linger
yet with its majesty and sweetness, and
you hear it in the granfield, in the
swoop of the wind amid the mountain
| businesses, in the canary's warble and
the thunder shock, in the brooks tin
| kle and the oceans paean. There are
soft cadcnces in nature and loud notes,
some of which we cannot hear at all
and others that are so terrific that we
cannot appreciate them.
The animalculae have their music,
and the spicuia of hay and the globule
OF water are as certainly resonant with
the voice of God as the highest heavens
in which the armies of the redeemed
celebrate their victories. When the
breath of the flower strikes the air, and
the wing Of the FREELY cleavcs IT, there
is sound and there As melody; and as
to those utterances of nature which
seem harsh and Overwhelming, ii is as
when YOU stand in the midst of great
orchestra, and the sound almost rend'
your ear because you are too neal
TO catch the blending oftthe music
so, my friends, we stand too near the
Iesolating storm and the irighilul
whirlWind to catch the blending Of the
music, but when that music rises I,
where God is, and the invisible beings
who float above US, then | suppose the
harmony is as sweet rs tits tremendous
In the judgment day, that day of tumuli
and terror, there will be no dissonanc,
to those who can appreciate the music
1t will be as when sometimes grea
orgunst, in executing some great piece
breaks down the instrument upon
which he is playing the music. SO
when the great march of the judgmen
day is played under the hand OF earth
quake, and storm and conhagration
the world itself will break down viii
the music that is played on it. Tn,
fact is, we are all deaf, or we shoul'
understand that the whole universe il
but one harmony-the stars of tn,
J night only the ivory keys of grea
instrument on which Gods fingers pla.
the music of the spheres.
Music seems dependent on the law o
acoustics and mathematics, and ye
where these laws are not understood n
all the art is practced. There are to
day 500 musical journals in China. Tw,
; thousand years before Christ the Egyp
tians practced this art. Pythagora
learned it. Lasus of Hermione wrot
, essays on it. Plato and Aristotle intro
duced it into their schools, but | hay
. not much interest in that. My chief in
terest is in the music of the Bible.
, The Bible, like great harp with in
Vulnerable strings, swept by the finger
, of inspiration, trembles with it. So ia