p. 10 | MUSIC by Frederick S. Root

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 5, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 10.

MUSIC

By Frederick S. Root

“God sent his singers upon earth, With songs of sadness and of mirth, That they might touch the hearts of men, And bring them back to heaven again.”

Let all who sing remember how high and holy is their mission. Pure hearts and pure voices are sources of redemption to many a blasted and ruined life.

“Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee.”

How the lines melt to the tenderness of the Infinite Love! Wedded to appropriate melody, and sung by him whose soul is filled with a joyous sense of the Divine Presence in forgiveness, these words become the hallowed prayer of a worshipful people. So with hundreds of the grand old hymns of the church. When we put religion into music, either of instruments or of voices, and make the power of melody the power of the Holy Spirit in character, music rises to the measure of the old Hebrew conception of its place in the house of God, and becomes as the very breathing of that Harmony whose presence all space doth inhabit. The power of music in Christian worship is yet but a promise. Let the tides of religion in choir and congregation the deeper flow, and the sham of music, that sings the words without a sympathetic soul, will disappear forever, only to unveil the unutterable depths of a melody whose every tone is the master-tone of God.—Frederick S. Root.