The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 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 a Church.
Copyright, Louis Klopsch, 1899.
Wa aShinptOn

Washington,
DR.. Talmage to-day discussed a
most attractive department of re-
ligious worship-the service of song.
His ideas will be received with interest
by all who love to lift their voices in
praise in the Lords house. The text
is Nehemiah 1867: 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 1 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-
tion of the human throat as indicative
of what God means us to do with it?
In only an ordinary throat and lungs
there are IA direct muscles and 80 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
gives us sush 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 if, with the human
voice. a musical instrument of more
wonderful adaptation than all the mu-
steal instruments that man ever Gre
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 grainfield, in the
sSoop 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 cadences 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 spicula 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 cleaves it, there
is sound and there is melody; and as
to those utterances of nature which
seem harsh and overwhelming, it is as
when you stand in the midst of great
and the sound almost rends
your ear because you are too near
to catch the blending of the music,
so, my friends, we stand too near the
desolating storm and the frightful
whirlwind to catch the blending of the
but when that music rises to
where God is, and the invisible beings
who float above us, then l suppose the
harmony is as sweet as itds tremendous,
In the judgment day, that day of tumuIt
and terror, there will be no dissonance
to those who can appreciate the music.
1t will be as when sometimes a great
in executing some great piece,
breaks down the instrument upon
which he is playing the music. So,
when the great march of the judgment
day is played under the hand of earth
quake, and storm and confagration,
the world itself will break down with
the music that is played on it. The
fact is, we are all deaf, or we should
that the whole universe is
but one harmony-the stars of the !.
night only the ivory keys of a great
instrument on which Gods fingers play
the music of the spheres.
Music seems dependent On the law of
acoustics and mathematics, and yet
where these laws are not understood at
all the art is practiced. There are to-
lay 500 musical journals in China. Two
thousand years before Christ the Egyp-
5ians practiced this art. Pythagoras
learned it. Lasus of Hermione wrote
essays on it. Plato and Aristotle intro
1uced it into their schools, but | have
not much interest in that. Ny chief in
erest is in the music of the Bible.
The Bible, like a great harp with in
Vulnerable strings, swept by the fingers
If inspiration, trem bles with it. So far
back as the fourth chapter of Genesis |
you find the first organist and harper
Tubal. So far back as the thirty-first |
chapter of Genesis you find the first |
choir. All up and down the Bible you |
ind sacred muGc-at weddings, at in |
lugurations, at the treading of the wine |
press. The Hebrews understood how to |
make musical signs above the musical |
ext. When the Jews came from their !