THE WORTH AND WORTHLESSNESS OF MUSIC.

A Sermon

DELIVERED IN REGENT SQUARE CHURCH ON SUNDAY, MARCH 2ND, BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

"And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand : so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.”—1 SAM. xvi. 23.

In this chapter we have Saul and David brought together; and round the combination of these two names, as you well know, a wonderful history gathers. Saul and David! How bright is the halo that surrounds one of those heads, and how dark is the cloud that settles on the brow of the other! how increasingly bright the one; how increasingly dark the other! And let me say that these two men represent two great but opposing principles. David represents the man of grace. A man he is with many faults, with many things which make him like other men at their worst, but a man who is, notwithstanding, worthy of the title, a man according to God's own heart." A man subdued by grace, although with all his own individual points and characteristics; a man who could be Saul, a man who No. 17.

could be and might be Saul at his worst, but who, with all this, knows that he is bad, sincerely repents of his evil, and asks for grace that he may be better. And Saul is a man after, not God's own heart, but a man after his own heart. Saul, notwithstanding many points wherein he seems to be a David, is of a totally different spirit from David. How bright he was at the beginning! how frank, how modest, how generous, how ingenuous! David himself could scarcely have played the part better than Saul played it at the time when he was chosen to be king by Samuel, and suddenly exalted to that high dignity. And yet Saul, after all, was so centred in himself, so proud, so rebellious, so possessed of an evil spirit, that his day went down into deep and deepening darkness. When we think of him at the end, or try to forecast how it fared with him beyond the end, we feel that the best we can say, apart from the well-known lament, is to shake our heads and say nothing.

Now these two are brought together in this chapter. We have seen David already, on a former occasion. Let us look at Saul as he comes before us here. The Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him." See the way in which these Hebrews explain things. That is hardly the way in which philosophy, either of history or of mind-these are hardly the terms in which it speaks to-day; but I am prepared to stand to them. This is biblical psychology; this is the Scriptural keynote to all individual history, and all collective history. "The Lord" that is the grand feature of this Book; in its personal histories, or in its national histories. "The Lord either the presence of Him or the want of Him-the Lord's presence, the explanation of all a man's goodness, his in

tellect, his power, his valour, his industry, his success, either " for himself or for his time. The absence of the Lord, the opposite of the Lord, is also the explanation of all that is dark and calamitous in the same directions.

Notice further how the old Book does not hesitate to trace everything up to God. The writers of this Book, whenever they come across a dark, perplexing problem, are men of this stamp-they get themselves to rest, to mental rest and consistency, when otherwise all things would rock and reel, by pressing everything up to God and letting it lie there. I find, speaking for myself in my day, and for my heart-breaking problems, that I get the same rest by letting everything go up to Him too. To put the very devil into God's hands gives rest: I can wait now; he is on a chain. No wonder Calvinism, as it is called, will always hold its own. It is because it is the most logical system, at any rate, to say the least of it. There is a thorough-going logic about it. We may call it iron, or may call it gloomy; I am not troubled about that. I seem to feel in my own heart what is the reason of it. Once you put God in the heart of the difficulty, I grant it does not untie the knot, but I

expect to see it untie all knots and straighten out all problems in the end. Put the Lord in, and don't get There is a problem for

nervous about His reputation.

Why is evil here ? And

every system, a great difficulty. it is remarkable how the writers of the Bible, without making God responsible, put Him in there in the meantime. We rest here. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" You see how the problem breaks out upon us. "An evil spirit from the Lord troubled Saul." What is this? What imp from hell crept up to the Bible and wrote that in it? "An evil spirit from the Lord." Well, but

that rings all through the Bible! The Lord is put in, in the meantime, for us short-sighted mortals, and He seems to say, "Rest here; see as far along the difficulty as Me, and do not ask anything further. And although it seems hard for Me, and although it seems awkward for Me, I will bear the brunt; and in the end of the day I will be just and justified, and clear Myself when I am judged."

"An evil spirit from the Lord troubled him." But has not the Revised Version done something with such a reckless sentence as that? No, my friend, it has not. The Revisers were only revisers. A number of people, we know, expected them to be re-versers. Ah, then, how many nice, smooth sentences would have taken the place of this, and many another awfully rugged utterance like it!

But I do not dwell upon that, I rather come upon another point. Here is a man in an iron cage, as Bunyan would say. Look at him-dark, gloomy, miserable, melancholy man. What is wrong with him? There are several elements in his trouble. The Spirit of the Lord left Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him. Look at that man; for the longer I live, the more I get to see that there are many such still in Israel. My friends, I would like to be a better counsellor to you than Saul's servants were to Saul. I would like to go along their line, but to go a great deal farther, while I am at it. Will you listen? Heads up, hearts up, those who are troubled, those who are moody, those who are melancholy, those who are in distress in mind or heart, if not in body. Listen! Let us deal firmly with your disease, my atrabilious friend. First of all, as I see in Saul, so I see in you-a good man gone wrong. You are not bad, utterly bad, as yet. No, there are grand elements in you, and there are great possibilities

yet, God be praised! there are great possibilities in connec

tion with you.

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The blackest night that veils the sky

Of beauty hath a share;

The darkest heart hath signs to tell

That God still lingers there."

He only goes at the last, and then it is with weeping as He goes. You are moody and melancholy, because you look back on a happier beginning. That is one thing. Years ago, "in life's morning march, when your bosom was young," you started out like Saul. Life was to you a kingdom, and you were climbing up to its very throne. You began well; bright and fair and happy was everything on your horizon.

Yet to-day you sit in moodiness, bitterness, and hardness of spirit. You cannot help thinking of those earlier years, when the soft south wind blew, and you spread the sail to the breeze, "and let loose from Crete."

"A wet sheet and a flowing sea,

And a wind that followed fast,

That filled the white and rustling sail,
And bent the gallant mast."

The south wind blew, and all things in nature and Providence scemed to concur and smile upon you. The memory of it to-day increases the present blackness and the future foreboding. Is that not so? Why should wo speak of these Old Testament characters as if they were dead mummies in a museum! My friend, is not that the reason of the darkness gathered here on your very face? Although you are come to the house of God, although you still keep to the worship of God, although you are not an