Music in Worship
Neh_7:67 : ’93And they had two hundred forty and five singing men and singing women.’94
The best music has been rendered under trouble. The first duet that I know anything of was given by Paul and Silas when they sang praises to God and the prisoners heard them. The Scotch Covenanters, hounded 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 I 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 a 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 pardon.
Have you ever noticed the construction of the human throat as indicative of what God means us to do with it? In only an ordinary throat and lungs there are fourteen direct muscles and thirty indirect muscles that can produce a very great variety of sounds. What does that mean? It means that you should sing! Do you suppose that God, who gives us such a musical instrument as that, intends us to keep it shut? Suppose some great tyrant should get possession 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 Freebourg and all the other great musical instruments of the world’97you 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 musical instruments that man ever created, 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 omnipotent voice with which God commanded the world into being seems to linger yet with its majesty and sweetness, and you hear it in the grainfield, in the swoop of the wind amid the mountain fastnesses, in the canary’92s warble and the thunder shock, in the brook’92s tinkle and the ocean’92s p’e6an. 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 animalcul’e6 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 firefly 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 a great orchestra, 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 music; but when that music rises to where God is, and the invisible beings who float above us, then I suppose the harmony is as sweet as it is tremendous. 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 sometimes a great organist, 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 earthquake and storm and conflagration, 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’97the stars of the night only the ivory keys of a great instrument on which God’92s 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 practised. There are today five hundred musical journals in China. Two thousand years before Christ the Egyptians practised this art. Pythagoras learned it. Lasus, of Hermione, wrote essays on it. Plato and Aristotle introduced it into their schools; but I have not much interest in that. My chief interest is in the music of the Bible. The Bible, like a great harp with innumerable strings, swept by the fingers of inspiration, trembles with it. So far back as the fourth chapter of Genesis you find the first organist and harper’97Jubal. So far back as the thirty-first chapter of Genesis you find the first choir. All up and down the Bible you find sacred music’97at weddings, at inaugurations, at the treading of the wine-press. The Hebrews understood how to make musical signs above the musical text. When the Jews came from their distant homes to the great festivals at Jerusalem they brought harp and timbrel and trumpet and poured along the great Jud’e6an highways a river of harmony, until in and around the temple the wealth of a nation’92s song and gladness had accumulated. In our day we have a division of labor in music, and we have one man to make the hymn, another man to make the tune, another man to play it on the piano, and another man to sing it. Not so in Bible times. Miriam, the sister of Moses, after the passage of the Red Sea, composed a doxology, set it to music, clapped in on a cymbal, and at the same time sang it. David the psalmist was at the same time poet, musical composer, harpist, and singer; and the majority of his rhythm goes vibrating through all the ages.
There were in Bible time stringed instruments’97a harp of three strings played by fret and bow; a harp of ten strings, responding only to the fingers of the performer. Then there was the crooked trumpet, fashioned out of the horn of the ox or the ram. Then there were the sistrom and the cymbals, clapped in the dance or beaten in the march. There were four thousand Levites, the best men of the country, whose only business it was to look after the music of the temple. These four thousand Levites were divided into two classes, and officiated on different days. Can you imagine the harmony when these white-robed Levites, before the symbols of God’92s presence, and by the smoking altars and the candlesticks that sprang upward and branched out like trees of gold and under the wings of the cherubim, chanted the one hundred and thirty-sixth Psalm of David? Do you know how it was done? One part of that great choir stood up and chanted. ’93Oh! give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good!’94 Then the other part of the choir, standing in some other part of the temple, would come in with the response: ’93For his mercy endureth forever.’94 Then the first part would take up the song again, and say: ’93Unto him who only doeth great wonders.’94 The other part of the choir would come in with overwhelming response: ’93For his mercy endureth forever,’94 until in the latter part of the song, the music floating backward and forward, harmony grappling with harmony, every trumpet sounding, every bosom heaving, one part of this great white-robed choir would lift the anthem: ’93Oh! give thanks unto the God of heaven,’94 and the other part of the Levite choir would come in with the response: ’93For his mercy endureth forever.’94
But I am glad to know that all through the ages there has been great attention paid to sacred music. Ambrosius, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Charlemagne, gave it their mighty influence, and in our day the best musical genius is throwing itself on the altars of God. Handel and Mozart and Bach and Durante and Wolf and scores of other men and women have given the best part of their genius to church music. A truth in words is not half so mighty as a truth in song. Luther’92s sermons have been forgotten, but the ’93Judgment Hymn’94 he composed is resounding yet all through Christendom.
I congratulate the world and the Church on the advancement made in this art’97the Edinburgh societies for the improvement of music, the Swiss singing societies, the Exeter Hall concerts, the triennial musical convocation at D’fcsseldorf, Germany, and Birmingham, England, the conservatories of music at Munich and Leipsic, the Handel and Haydn, and Harmonic and Mozart societies of this country, the academies of music in New York, Brooklyn, Boston, Charleston, New Orleans, Chicago, and every city which has any enterprise.
Now, my friends, how are we to decide what is appropriate, especially for church music? There may be a great many differences of opinion. In some of the churches they prefer a trained choir; in others, the old style precentor. In some places they prefer the melodeon, the harp, the cornet, the organ; in other places they think these things are the invention of the devil. Some would have a musical instrument played so loud you cannot stand it, and others would have it played so soft you cannot hear it. Some think a musical instrument ought to be played only in the interstices of worship, and then with indescribable softness; while others are not satisfied unless there be startling contrasts and staccato passages that make the audience jump, with great eyes and hair on end, as from a vision of the Witch of Endor. But, while there may be great varieties of opinion in regard to music, it seems to me that the general spirit of the Word of God indicates what ought to be the great characteristics of church music.
And I remark, in the first place, a prominent characteristic ought to be adaptiveness to devotion. Music that may be appropriate for a concert-hall or the opera-house or the drawing-room may be inappropriate in church. Glees, madrigals, ballads, may be as innocent as psalms in their places. But church music has only one design, and that is devotion, and that which comes with the toss, the swing, and the display of an opera-house is a hindrance to the worship. From such performances we go away saying: ’93What splendid execution! Did you ever hear such a soprano? Which of those solos did you like the better?’94 When, if we had been rightly wrought upon, we would have gone away saying: ’93Oh! how my soul was lifted up in the presence of God while they were singing that first hymn! I never had such rapturous views of Jesus Christ as my Saviour as when they were singing that last doxology.’94
My friends, there is an everlasting distinction between music as an art and music as a help to devotion. Though a Schumann composed it, though a Mozart played it, though a Sontag sang it, away with it if it does not make the heart better and honor Christ. Why should we rob the programmes of worldly gayety when we have so many appropriate songs and tunes composed in our own day, as well as that magnificent inheritance of church psalmody which has come down fragrant with the devotions of other generations’97tunes no more worn out than they were when our great-grandfathers climbed up on them from the church pew to glory? Dear old souls, how they used to sing! When they were cheerful, our grandfathers and grandmothers used to sing ’93Colchester.’94 When they were very meditative, then the boarded meeting-house rang with ’93South Street’94 and ’93St. Edmond’92s.’94 Were they struck through with great tenderness, they sang ’93Woodstock.’94 Were they wrapped in visions of the glory of the Church, they sang ’93Zion.’94 Were they overborne with the love and glory of Christ, they sang ’93Ariel.’94 And in those days there were certain tunes married to certain hymns, and they have lived in peace a great while, these two old people, and we have no right to divorce them. ’93What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’94
Born as we have been amid this great wealth of church music, augmented by the composition of artists in our own day, we ought not to be tempted out of the sphere of Christian harmony and try to seek unconsecrated sounds. It is absurd for a millionaire to steal.
I remark also that correctness ought to be a characteristic of church music. While we all ought to take part in this service, with perhaps a few exceptions, we ought at the same time to cultivate ourselves in this sacred art. God loves harmony, and we ought to love it. There is no devotion in a howl or yelp. In this day, when there are so many opportunities of high culture in this sacred art, I declare that those parents are guilty of neglect who let their sons and daughters grow up knowing nothing about music. In some of the European cathedrals the choir assemble every morning and every afternoon of every day the whole year to perfect themselves in this art, and shall we begrudge the half-hour we spend Friday nights in the rehearsal of sacred song for the Sabbath?
Another characteristic must be spirit and life. Music ought to rush from the audience like the water from a rock’97clear, bright, sparkling. If all the other 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 two or three thousand 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’92s 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 half so well as when upright we throw our whole body into it. Let our song be like an acclamation of victory. You have a 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 a bar behind, we will excuse you! Still, it is better to do as Paul says, and sing ’93with the spirit and the understanding also.’94
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 a 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 ’93two hundred and forty and five singing men and singing women.’94 In some churches it is almost considered a disturbance if a man let out his voice to full compass, and the people get up on tiptoe and look over between the spring hats, and wonder what that man is making all that noise about. In Syracuse, New York, in a Presbyterian Church, there was one member who come to me when I was the pastor of another church in that city, and told me his trouble’97how that as he persisted in singing on the Sabbath day, a committee, made up of the session and the choir, had come to ask him if he would not just please to keep still? You have a 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 in our families, sing in our schools, sing in our churches.
I want to rouse you to a unanimity in Christian song that has never yet been exhibited. Come, now! clear your throats and get ready for this duty, or you will never hear the end of this. I never shall forget hearing a Frenchman sing the ’93Marseillaise’94 on the Champs Elys’e9es, Paris, just before the battle of Sedan in 1870. I never saw such enthusiasm before or since. As he sang that national air, oh! how the Frenchmen shouted! Have you ever in an English assemblage heard a band play ’93God Save the Queen’94? If you have, you know something about the enthusiasm of a national air. Now, I tell you that these songs we sing Sabbath 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 Christian psalmody, and keep us from disgracing it by our indifference and frivolity.
When Cromwell’92s army went into battle, he stood at the head of it one day, and gave out the long-metre doxology to the tune of the ’93Old Hundredth,’94 and that great host, company by company, regiment by regiment, division by division, joined in the doxology:
Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise him, all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
And while they sang they marched, and while they marched they fought, and while they fought they got the victory. O 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. ’93Gloria in Excelsis’94 is written over many organs. Would that by our appreciation of the goodness of God and the mercy of Christ and the grandeur of heaven, we could have ’93Gloria in Excelsis’94 written over all our souls. ’93Glory be 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. Amen!’94
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage