CHAPTER II
[1]The instinct to use song in worship was recognized so long ago as 1695 by Dr. Hickman: “There never was any land so barbarous, or any people so polite, but have always approached their gods with the solemnity of music and have expressed their devotions with a song.” (Quoted by Dr. A. S. Hoyt in his Public Worship for Non-Liturgical Churches.)
[2]“Our hymns spring out of religious experience at its best, and they tend to lift experience to its highest levels. The very cream of truth and of soul life is gathered into them. They contain the refined riches, the precious essences, the cut and polished jewels of Christianity in all ages. They are truly prophetic, the records of the insight and intuition and rapture of the seer and the saint.” (Dr. Waldo S. Pratt, in Musical Ministries. [New York: Revell Co., 1915.] Used by permission.)
[3]Henry Ward Beecher placed a high value on the song service of the church: “I have never loved men under any circumstances as I have loved them while singing with them; never at any other time have I been so near heaven with you, as in those hours when our songs were wafted thitherward.”
[4]“In all great religious movements the people have been inspired with a passion for singing. They have sung their creed: it seems the freest and most natural way of declaring their triumphant belief in great Christian truths, forgotten or denied in previous times of spiritual depression and now restored to their rightful place in the thought and life of the Church. Song has expressed and intensified their enthusiasm, their new faith, their new joy, their new determination to do the will of God.” (Dr. W. R. Dale.)
[5]Pratt, Musical Ministries.
[6]Ephesians 5: 18-20.
[7]Colossians 3: 16.
[8]I Corinthians 14: 15.
[9]Over three-quarters of a century ago, this lament was made by a prominent New England minister: “Many a man, who carefully interrogates his own experience, will confess that, while the voice of public prayer readily engages his attention and carries with it his devout desires, it is not so with the act of praise; that he very seldom finds his affections rising upon its notes to heaven—very seldom can he say at its close that he has worshiped God. The song has been wafted near him as a vehicle for conveying upward the sweet odor of a spiritual service, but the offering has been withheld, and the song ascends as empty of divine honors as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” (Rev. Daniel L. Furber, in Hymns and Choirs.)