St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1899-10-07
A SERVICE OF SONG.
Rev. Dr.. Talmage's Sermon on
Music in Religion.

Kew OIs A0AmA&eS 0SAmVA w
Music in Religion.
rhe Best Music Rendered Under
Trouble-God Meaut All to
sins-The Proper Music
for q Church.
copyright, Louis K,opsch. 1881
Washington.
DR.. Talmage to-day discussed a
most attractive department OF re-
ligious worship-the service of song.
His ideas will be recei:ed with interest
by all who love to lift their voices in
praise in the Lords house. The text
Is Nehemiah 1867: "tAnd 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
captiyes in the text had music left in
them, and declare that il 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 1t?
In only an ordinary throat and lungs
there are IA direct muscles and 50 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 suci q 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 OF
gan. of Westminster abbey, and the
organ of Lucerne, and the organ at
HARLEM, 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 human
voice, a musical instrument of more
| wonderful adaptation than all the mu-
sical instruments that man ever ere
ated, you shut i: against the praise OF
| God.
Let those refuse to sing
Who never knew oar 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 hnger
| vet with its majesty and sweetness, and
YOU hear it in the grainfield, in the
swoop of the wind amid the mountain
| Businesses, in the canarys 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 Mt all
| and others that are so terrific that we
cannot appreciate them.
| The animalcuiae 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 Lower strikes the air. and
the wing of the freely cieayes 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
oahestra, and the sound almost rends
your ear because you are too near
to catch the blending of the music,
so. nv friends, we stand too near the
iesolating 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 l suppose the
harmony is as sweet as tits tremendous
In the judgment day, that day OF tumuit
and terror, there will be no dissonance
to those who can appreciate the music.
4 II will be as when sometimes great
organist, in executing scme 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 confiagration,
the world itself will break down with
the music that is played on it. The
fact is, we are all deaf, or we should
understand 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 a.
all the art is practiced. There are to
day 500 musical journals in China. Two
thousand years before Christ the Egyp
tians practiced this art. Pythagoras
learned it. Lasus of Hermione wrote
essays on it. Plato and Asistotle intro
duced it into their schools, but have
not much interest in that. My chief in
terest is an the music a Sle Bible
The Bible, like great harp with in
Vulnerable strings, swept by the fingers
of inspiration, tremblss with it. So fan
back as the fourth chapter of Genesi!
you find the first organist and harper
Jubal. So far back as the thirty-firs
chapter of Genesis you find the frs
choir. All up and down the Bible yo'
find sacred music-at weddings, at in
, augurations, at the treading of the win
press. The Hebrews understood how t
: make musical signs above the musica
text. When the Jews came from thei
, distant homes to the great festivals a
, Jerusalem, they brought harp and tim
: brel and trumpet and poured along tn
, great Judean highways river Of har