Psalm 137:4 How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land? Music suggests perfect harmony of character. To have a musical instrument that will adequately express musical thought in sound and harmony requires very care-fully-selected woods as to acoustic properties for its construction. John Albert, who has been called "the Stradivarius of America," died the other day at the age of ninety years. His great success in making violins, that won him fame through the world, was as much due to the care with which he selected the woods from which they were made as to his skill as a workman. So much depended on the proper woods that Albert sought them sometimes at the risk of his life. Once he lay for weeks between life and death, the victim of an accident while he was on the hunt for a certain wood in an almost impassable forest. Ole Bull, the great violinist, pronounced him one of the great violin makers of the world because he possessed the greatest knowledge of the acoustic properties of woods of any man living at that time. Surely if a violin maker must pay such great heed to the character of the wood out of which he constructs a violin, in order that he may make it a perfect interpreter of musical thought to human ears, we should not wonder at the care of God in seeking to so purify and cleanse our hearts that they shall be resonant, and responsive to the slightest touch of the Holy Spirit, and thus be able to interpret the melodies of heaven. (L. A. Banks, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land? |
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