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If Asaph and that choir did lift up their note with all sorts of musical instruments in the old law, while the sacrifice was burning upon the altar, I am sure we have much more cause, not in imitation of Asaph, but of the angels, to praise the Lord with psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs. Luther, I know not upon what reason, unless it were because the angels in my text did begin the gospel with melody, he makes psalmody to be one of the notes of the orthodox Church of Christ. The voice of man certainly is to praise God in its best tunes and elegancies: and the reasons why musical notes are most fit and necessary amidst our Christian prayers are these four:

1. Rules of piety steal into our mind with the delight of the harmony, The Agathyrsians, even to Plato's days, were wont to sing their laws, and put them in tune, that men might repeat them in their recreations.

2. It kindles devotion, and fills the soul with more loving affections. Make a cheerful noise to the God of Jacob, says David. As the noise of flutes and of trumpets inspire a courage into soldiers, and inflame them to be victorious, so the psalms of the Church raise up the heart, and make it leap to be with God; as if our soul were upon our lips, and would fly away to heaven.

3. An heavy spirit oppresseth zeal, and that service of God is twice done which is done with alacrity: and our Christian merriment by St. James's rule is, singing and making melody to the Lord. When our Saviour and His company were sad the night before His Passion, to put away that heaviness they sang an hymn, when they went to Mount Olivet.

4. To sing some part of Divine doctrine is very profitable, because that which is sung is most treatibly pronounced; the understanding stabs long upon it, and nails it the faster to the memory.

(Bishop Hacker)

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KJV: And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

WEB: Suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army praising God, and saying,