"Singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord." [17]
Can you do that? If not, music is no true recreation to you. Whatever chills your feeling for eternal things, making them seem dull and far away, is no breath of life-refreshment, but comes bearing the fumes of death.
Do you think you would never sing at all, unless you sometimes forgot such solemn thoughts? Ah there you are mistaken.
"Behold, my servants shall sing for joy of heart." [18]
Not forgetfully, but in full remembrance.
"Is any merry? let him sing psalms." [19]
"Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage." [20]
Now somebody will say that I have wandered quite away from recreation, and gone off to church. But no; I am speaking of heart and home music. You all know that there is no recreation about most of your music now-a-days. You bore yourselves and other people with much practising, and when you have learned, as you think, then you drop it all. Who is ready with a song for some weary, tuneless life? or who "keeps up her music" till the tired years of her own? Work for it, pay for it, drop it,—that is the record. Your music, as it is, is a dead thing; and I want you to put the principle of life in it. For whatever you begin for your Master, you will also hold fast for him.
Read over these words and ponder them well:
"He that had received the five talents, went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents." [21]