Connecticut western news., 1899-09-07

anu MUSIC as nn Aid to Devotion.
 National Airs of the Kingdom of
 Heaven.
 Copyright. Louis Klopsch 1s9ol
 WASHINGTON, Sept. 3.-Dr. Talmage today discusses most attractive de- partment of religious worship-the service of song. His idea will be re- ceived with interest by all who love to lift their voices In praise in the vii, 67 And they had two hundred forty and five singing men and sing ing women"
 The best music has bean rendered under 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 Coyenanters, 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 persecution there ought to be great multitude of men and women willing to sing the praises of God. All our churches need arousal on this sub- ject Those who can sing must throw their souls into the exercise, and those who cannot sing must learn how, and r. t< a,sf fn voice, hymn to hymn, anthem to an- them, and the music shall swell jubi- lant with thanksgiving and tremulous with pardon.
 Have you ever noticed the construc- eion of the human throat as indicative of what God means us to do with It! Tn 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 such a musical instrument as that, intends us to keep 1t shut? Sup pose some great tyrant should get pos session of the musical instruments of the world and should lock up the organ 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 monster, and yet you are more wicked If, with the hu- man voice, a musical instrument of more wonderful adaptation than all the musical instruments that man ever created, you shut 1t 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 Born In the Soul.
 Music seems to have been born in the soul of the natural world. The omnipo- tent voice with which God commanded the world into being seems to finger yet with It's majesty and sweetness, and you hear 1t in the grainfield, in the swoop of the wind amid the mountain businesses, in the canary's warble and the thunder shock, in the brooks tinkle and the ocean's 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 re- deemed celebrate their victories. When the breath of the flower strikes the air + o2 aI< there Is sound and there Is melody. And, as to those utterances of nature which seem harsh and overwhelming, 1t is as when you stand in the midst of a great orchestra and the sound almost rends your ear because you are too near to catch the blending of the mu- sic. So, my friends, we stand too near the desolating storm and the frightful whirlwind to catch the blending of the music; but when that music rises to where God is, and the invisible beings who float above us, then suppose the harmony Is as sweet as 1t is tremen- dous. In the judgment day, that day of tumult and terror, there will be no dissonance to those who can appreciate the music. It will be as when some times a great organist, in executing 1 some great piece, breaks down the in- | strument upon which he is playing the music. So when the great march of the | Judgment day Is played under the hand of earthquake and storm and conf1agra- | ton the world itself will break down with the music that is played on 1t. The fact Is, we are all deaf, or we oh ,r,1a tn T hat thn uhn1a pf- verse Is but one harmony-the stars of | the night only the ivory keys of great instrument on which Gods fin gers 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 | today 800 musical journals in China. Two thousand years before Christ the | Egyptians practiced this art. Pythag- | oras learned it. Lasus of Hermione | wrote essays on 1t Plato and Aristo- tie introduced 1t into their schools. But | I have not much interest in that. My | chief interest Is in the music of the | Bible.
 Music of the Bible.
 The blDie, Hike great harp With ln- numerable strings, swept by the fin gers of inspiration, trembles with 1t. So far back as the fourth chapter of Genesis you find the first organist and harper-Jubal So far back as the thirty-frst chapter of Genesis you find the first choir. All up and down the Bible you find sacred music-at weddings, at inaumrations, at the tread1ng Of the wine press. The He brews understood how to make mu- sical signs above the musical text. When the Jews came from their dis tant homes to the great festivals at Jerusalem, they brought harp and timbrel and trumpet and poured along the great Judaean highways a river of harmony until in and arnnnd the tenn |