If some stickler for ritual and stateliness objects that these services are entirely too informal, and too much like a political campaign, the partisan of Mr. Sunday will heartily assent. These are great American crowds in their every-day humor. These evangelistic meetings are not regular church services. It has already been made plain that there is no "dim religious light" about the Sunday Tabernacle meetings.
It is a tribute to the comprehensiveness of the Sunday method that they bring together the most representative gatherings imaginable every day under the unadorned rafters of the big wooden shell called the Tabernacle. Shrewdly, the evangelist has made sure of the democratic quality of his congregation. He has succeeded in having the gospel sing its way into the affection and interest of every-day folk.
It is no valid objection to the Sunday music that it is so thoroughly entertaining. The Tabernacle crowds sing, not as a religious duty, but for the sheer joy of singing. One of the commonest remarks heard amid the crowd is "I never expect to hear such singing again till I get to Heaven." It is real Christian ministry to put the melodies of the Gospel into the memories of the multitudes, and to brighten with the songs of salvation the gray days of the burden-bearers of the world. Boys and men on the street whistle Gospel songs. The echoes of Tabernacle music may be heard long after Mr. Sunday has gone from a community in ten thousand kitchens and in the shops and factories and stores of the community. This is the strategy of "the expulsive power of a new affection." These meetings give to Christians a new and jubilant affirmation, instead of a mere defense for their faith. The campaign music carries the campaign message farther than the voice of any man could ever penetrate.
Upon the place of music in the Christian life Sunday says: "For sixteen years there had been no songs in Jerusalem. It must have been a great loss to the Jews, for everywhere we read we find them singing. They sang all the way to the Red Sea, they sang when Jesus was born, they sang at the Last Supper and when Jesus was arisen.
"Song has always been inseparably associated with the advancement of God's word. You'll find when religion is at low ebb the song will cease. Many of the great revivals have been almost entirely song. The great Welsh revival was mostly song. In the movements of Martin Luther, Wesley, Moody and Torrey you will find abundance of song. When a church congregation gets at such low ebb that they can't sing and have to hire a professional choir to sing for them, they haven't got much religion. And some of those choir members are so stuck up they won't sing in a chorus. If I had a bunch like that they'd quit or I would.
"Take the twenty-fourth Psalm, 'Lift up your heads, O ye gates,' and the thirty-third Psalm. They were written by David to be sung in the temple.
"I can imagine his singing them now. They were David's own experiences. Look at them. Now you hear an old lobster get up to give an experience, 'Forty years ago I started forth—.' The same old stereotyped form.
"There's many a life today which has no song. The most popular song for most of you would be,
"'Where is that joy which once I knew,
When first I loved the Lord?'"