"Oh! I mean, do you have singing at family worship? It's a very common custom in Scotland—they usually go together."
Of course we had never heard of such a thing. In fact, family worship in any form was one of the dainties we kept for visitors—if they were able to help themselves.
So Mr. Laird spoke a few words about their Scottish Psalmody—I had never heard the term before—and he said there were no hymns to touch them, for strength and grandeur. I consider this epoch-making, in a certain sense; for the psalms of David have been the songs in the house of my pilgrimage for long years now.
Suddenly uncle asked him to sing one for us. He seemed quite willing, and we all listened eagerly; except Charlie, who thought, I fancied, that it was a waste of precious time.
I love to sit and think again of that wonderful experience. Uncle was there, and my Aunt Agnes, and my precious mother; my promised husband, too, was of the little company. I can see again the look of expectation, surprise, and almost wonder as the young minister, with serious mien, sang us one of the psalms of his native land. He chose the eighty-ninth—I know them nearly all by number now. Our visitor's voice was not so cultured as some I have heard, but it was clear and sweet, and his ear was true,—and, best of all, his whole soul seemed to be in the great words as they rose slowly from his lips. The words are so noble that I must write them out.
"Oh! greatly blessed the people are
The joyful sound that know—
In brightness of Thy face, oh, Lord,
They ever on shall go.
"They in Thy name shall all the day
Rejoice exceedingly
And in Thy righteousness shall they
Exalted be on high."
So ran the mighty song. But I think we felt the grandeur of it most when he sang the next two lines:
"Because the glory of their strength
Doth only stand in Thee,"
which impressed me then, and still impresses me, as the most majestic union of words I ever heard in any form of religious song.