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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 82

Church Psalmody

Church Psalmody.

Not that it can affect the divine mind, but as having a reflex influence upon the minds of the worshippers, church psalmody is one of the grandest institutions upon earth, for without it all churches would lose half their power and half their interest. Even divorced altogether from religion, music makes a direct appeal to the finest page 20 feelings of man's nature, awakening them to an intensity and fervour not to be attained by any other means. That soul which is insensible to the strains of melting pathos evoked by a well-trained orchestra, is dead to one of the main enjoyments of life. But, when blended with religion, pointing man from time to eternity, from the darkness of this world's light to the effulgence of the eternal day, to the re-union of long-parted friends in the regions of immortality, where

"The creaking hasp

That hangs upon the gloomy bier"

shall never again be heard, where the broken column and the weeping lyre are all forgotten, and where God shall wipe away all tears from all eyes, such music becomes a power equalled by no other upon earth. Neither preaching nor praying has one half the power of singing to induce a devout and happy frame of mind. A religion without singing would be no more possible than day without the sun. And why? because it is a foretaste of those ecstatic employments, which constitute the bliss of heaven. More than preaching and praying and all other means combined, music here prepares man for the chorus of another and better world. It vivifies, unifies, fortifies, purifies, sanctifies, beatifies, satisfies, a congregation worshipping together, and lifts them for the time being to feel as if they occupied a higher than the earthly plane. On a recent occasion when Handel's Messiah was given in Westminster Abbey, it was observed that such was the power of the music, the very walls and windows of that antique building appeared to tremble under the mellifluous strains of the melody, and the vast assemblage to feel as if they, and the spirits of the dead, who were buried around, had met in one grand jubilee. Grand music is the secret of the success of the Roman Catholic Church, breathing into it, in spite of all its mummeries, a life and a vigour and a Christian unity, which no one Protestant church can equal. Grand music is the secret of the success of Moody and Sankey in one field, and of the Salvation Army in another, who, by well-directed efforts, have rescued and christianised fallen men and women and reprobates and outcasts of all kinds by thousands, all over the world, which other church organizations, by preaching and praying, never could touch. Music was the secret of Methodism. Luther sang Germany into the reformation. Sing on, then, I say, fellow pilgrims on life's journey, in hope, in faith, in joy, not as a service of praise to omnipotence, but as a duty you owe to yourselves; eliminate every thing from your melodies and your preaching and praying derogatory of the divine character, and come it will, when all that is valuable in religion will be attainable by men, and may be appropriated by them in their lives, to warrant the inscription over the common mausoleum of the race,

"Nec angores mortis timuerunt

Nec in certamine seutiebant."