Ephesians 5:19 Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; This is but one of hundreds of passages in which the inspired writers, both of the Old and the New Testaments, dwell on the sacredness of music. "Joy and gladness shall be found therein," says David of the redeemed Zion, "thanksgiving, and the voice of melody." Music is in our Lord's parable the fit sign of joy for the returning prodigal. "Is any merry," says St. James, "let him sing psalms." Not only the psalms which we have just been singing, but it is not too much to say that even the whole Bible rings with music. There is an heavenly music in it and an earthly music. For in the very beginning when the earth was made we are told that "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." And in the very beginning of the gospel also, when the gospel was revealed, there was with the herald angel "a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, goodwill towards men." And as music is the earliest, so is it the last glimpse we have of heaven, when, before its azure curtain was closed forever to mortal eyes, we see myriads of angels shouting Hallelujah; and "harpers harping with their harps," and the redeemed in their countless multitudes as with "the sound of many waters, and as with the voice of great thunder," "singing the song of Moses and the Lamb." And so, too, from first to last, there is in the Bible an abundance of earthly music. In the fourth chapter of Genesis, you have the first instruments invented by Jubal — "the father of all such as handle the harp and organ." In the thirty-first chapter of Genesis you have the first choir, when Laban says that he would have sent Jacob away with mirth and with songs, with tabret and with harp. And after that the whole Bible thrills with song. There is Miriam with her timbrels shaken over the rolling waves which have drowned the enemies of God. There are the silver trumpets of the new moons and the solemn feast days. There is David with his psalms, now sad as the wail over Saul, and Jonathan lost upon the mountains of Gilboa; now rapturous as the paeans which tell of the triumph of the Lord. There are the Levites in their white robes on the temple steps, the one choir singing aloud, "Oh, give thanks unto the Lord," and the other replying as with thunderous antiphone — "for His mercy endureth forever." The exiles march home from Babylon with rivers of music; the disciples break forth into hymns after Pentecost; our Lord and His apostles sing a hymn before that last walk under the olive trees to the Garden of Gethsemane; Paul and Silas, their backs bleeding with Roman rods, turn their prison into an edeum, and God gives them songs in the night. Even in the Epistles, as far back as these early days of Christianity, we find more than one fragment of the earliest Christian hymns. And lastly, the Apocalypse, as Milton said, "shuts up the stately acts of its awful tragedy, and fitly concludes the whole volume of Scripture with a seven-fold chorus of Hallelujahs and harping symphonies." (Archdeacon Farrar.) Parallel Verses KJV: Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; |
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