THE CLAIMS OF MUSIC.

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth!

"Make a loud noise, and rejoice and sing praise.

"Sing unto the Lord with the harp;

"With the harp, and the voice of a psalm;

"With trumpets and sound of cornet,

"Make a joyful noise before the Lord, the King."-Ps. 98; 4-6.

"It is good to sing praise unto our God; for it is pleasant, and praise is comely." The voice of joy and the shout of gladness are the proper welcome of a great and gracious sovereign. The loyal heart will exult in the presence of its king. So exults the saint in the presence of Jehovah. "Great is the Lord," he exclaims, "and greatly to be praised." His heart leaps forth in songs of gladness, and rejoices in shouts of triumph. "I will extol thee," he cries, "my God, O King! and I will bless thy name for ever and ever. Every day will I bless thee: and I will praise thy name for ever and ever." As the exultation of his soul increases, and he feels how poor, how faint, how worthless are his own powers of praise, he calls on all the saints, on all the world, on "every thing that hath breath," on all creation, to swell the shout, and "praise him," their God, "according to his excellent greatness.'

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Thus David felt, and his bursting heart spake out. "O clap your hands," said he, "all ye people! shout unto God with the voice of triumph." Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises unto our King, sing praises: for God is the king of all the earth sing ye praises with understanding." "Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands! Sing forth the honor of his name, make his praise glorious." "Let the heavens rejoice,

and let the earth be glad let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; let the field be joyful, and all that is therein."

Let heav'n and earth with rapture leap,

Let seas their voice employ;
Let ev'ry height, let every deep,
Let fields and woods exulting keep
A jubilee of joy.

In such a work no power of the human soul should be unemployed. Everything that can excite the sacred merriment of the heart-everything that can help to swell the sound of joy must be brought forth. "Praise him," therefore, he exclaims, "with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs: praise him upon the loud cymbals praise him upon the high-sounding cymbals : let everything that hath breath praise the Lord."

Praise him with the trumpet's tongue,
Far and wide resounding:

Praise him with the harp well strung,
While your hearts are bounding;

Praise him with the sweet-toned lyre,
Let his praise the lute inspire,j
Praise him in a mighty choir,

Let his praise be loudly sung.

Praise him with the viol's strings,
Waking joyous feeling;
While the vault of glory rings
With the organ's pealing;

Let the cymbals ring his praise,
Wake the clarion's grandest lays,
Shouts let ev'ry creature raise,

And proclaim him-King of kings.

Such was the soul of David-such, when he breathed forth the inspired language of the text.

As David felt, so should every ransomed sinner feel. They who, like David, as they turn their eyes backwards, can say, "I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry; he brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings "-can also say, "and he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God." Such are called upon in the inspired language of the text, to engage, with all their powers of voice and heart, in celebrating the praises of their God. More forcibly to impress on all such the exhortation and requisition of the text, allow me to speak of

The origin, the history, the duty, and the uses of sacred music.

Let us then direct our enquiries to

I. The Origin of Sacred Music.

Music has no human father. It claims to have descended from the skies. Man has invented, it is true, ways and means of rendering music more expressive. To Jubal, the sixth in descent from Cain, is accorded, by the inspired record, the high honor of having been "the father of all such as handle the harp and organ." But who was the father of song? From whose prolific mind proceeded first the enchanting ode?

The origin of music is coeval with the human race. It is to be found in the very elements of the human soul. Man is the creature of thought and feeling. He came from the Creator's hands with a heart susceptible of an almost endless vari ety of emotions, and with the faculty of giving expression to them, so that each emotion might be distinctly known. These emotions may be perceived by the eye, in the diversified aspect of the features of the face, or in the position and posture of the whole, or a part of the frame. It is the ear, however, which most readily perceives, in the accents of the voice, the state and changes of the heart within. All animals to whom God has given the system of respiration, or in whom the lungs and larynx are found fully developed, are possessed of the faculty of voice. By various modifications of these organs, by the expansion or contraction of the lungs, the increasing or the diminishing of the length of the larynx, or wind-pipe, and the action of the epiglot, or covering of the wind-pipe, great variety of tones may be produced. These tones, by con stant and uniform association, become the well-known signs of a particular emotion, or feeling of the heart. Joy and grief, love and hate, hope and fear, peace and rage, contempt and pity, all have their peculiar tones-tones as universally under. stood as anything whatever pertaining to man. These tones have no provincial meaning: they are nature's language, com mon to man in every clime and age; and many of them not peculiar to him, but serving as the medium of thought even in the brute creation. These sounds can never fall upon the ear so as to be perceived, without exciting within the human soul the idea of a particular emotion.

"There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
"Some chord, in unison with what we hear,
"Is touched within us, and the heart replies."

These varied tones of nature are the original elements of music.
A combination of these tones after some order, more or less
prolonged, is the germ of music-a germ that existed in the
first thing that had breath, as soon as it began to breathe.

To arrange these tones in an orderly manner, so as to reduce music to a science, must have been the work of time. And yet scarcely any time could have elapsed after the creation, before the atmosphere was filled with the sweetest music. No sooner had the lark sprung forth at its Maker's word, than it soared

aloft, and poured its sweetest strains upon the air. Every bird became a warbler, ready-taught to join the choir of naturethe vesper-hymn at the first going down of the sun--the symphony in the anthem of "Creation." Thus ended the fifth day of the Creator's work. And when on the sixth, obedient to its Lord, the dust of the earth assumed the human form, and receiving the breath of God, became a living soul, the first accents that fell upon the human ear were of the sweetest music, and the first promptings of man's exulting bosom must have been to join the universal choir. As he gazed on the paradise that spread itself over the earth, and lifting up his eyes to the firmament, beheld the glories of the azure heavens, his soul must have kindled with adoring love and gratitude to God. And this must have been a feeling too sacred, deep, and overpowering for the tame and spiritless enunciation of mere words. The lofty song, in all its grandeur and sublimity, can alone unburden such a heart."

Thus the first human pair, before the close of the very day of their creation, must have joined in devout and joyous ascriptions of praise to their bounteous Lord. The first music of the human voice must have been a holy exercise. Sacred song is as ancient as the creation. It holds the precedence over every other. It is ths eldest born of all the daughters of music.

But man was not the first to cultivate the sacred art. It was not on earth alone that sweet voices were heard, as the Creator "spake and it was done." "The morning-stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." Why may not that angelic chorus have been heard in Eden, and its blissful notes prolonged by human tongues?

"In heaven the rapt'rous song began,

"And sweet seraphic fire

"Throngh all the shining legions ran,
"And strung and tun'd the lyre;

"Swift through the vast expanse it flew,
"And loud the echo roll'd,

"The theme. the song, the joy was new,
"Twas more than heav'n could hold."

In that day, when even the Creator himself walked and talked with his earth-born children, the intercourse of the angelic race with the holy inhabitants of Eden may have been vastly more familiar than is usually conjectured. Milton, in his immortal poem, has taken up the thought, and presented us with the beautiful idea of Adam and Eve catching their accents of praise from angel-lips and harps. Adam, as an introduction to their evening worship, thus addresses his beloved spouse:

"How often from the steep

"Of echoing hill or thicket. have we heard.
"Celestial voices to the midnight air,

"Sole or responsive to each other's note,
"Singing their great Creator! Oft, in bands,
"While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk,
"With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds,
"In full harmonic number join'd. their songs

"Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to heav'n ?"

It was reserved, doubtless, for a later period to introduce much of what is now regarded as essential to music. From the love of order, which in some degree is natural to man, would proceed a measured division of time in the enunciation of each note; and thus rhythm would become united with melody. Language, too, as one of the modes in which feeling is expressed, would soon be connected with the tone, and, uttered in a measured division of time, would give rise to the idea of harmony. Then followed, perhaps, the union of two or more voices, producing, in perfect accordance, sounds so kindred as readily to flow together and gratify the ear. In process of time, new combinations of sound would be produced and scientifically arranged; harmony would become more various, extensive and perfect; language more rhythmical, or better adapted to the purpose of song; instruments invented to aid the voice and thus music would become more and more a perfect expression of the soul.

II. The history of sacred music may next claim our atten tion. As no nation has yet been found without some kind of religion, so none are known to exist that do not employ music in some form as a part of their religious worship. In all ages, and among all people, it has been regarded as a most appro priate vehicle of praise. There is much reason, as we have seen, to believe that the practice of sacred music began in Eden. That it soon became widely spread appears from the fact, that instrumental music was invented and brought into use long before the deluge. Favored as we are with only fai glimpses of the first 2500 years of the world's history, embrac ing a period when as yet the worship of the true God was not reduced to a system, we are not to look for, in so small a compend, much allusion to the practice of sacred music. But as soon as we come down to the days of the first historian, as soon as we stand by the side of Moses, and look over the church of God, we find them engaged in the practice of this ancient art. No sooner have the host of Israel escaped from the land of bondage, than we behold them pouring forth their joy in a song of sacred praise. And they sing, too, as those who had often su ng before. "Then sang Moses and the children of Israel "the great congregation-" unto the Lord, and spake, saying:

"I will sing unto the Lord,

"For he hath triumphed gloriously. ད་
"The Lord is my strength and my song,
"And he has become my salvation."