[1]The instinct to use song in worship was recognized so long ago as
1695 by Dr. Hickman: “There never was any land so barbarous, or
any people so polite, but have always approached their gods with
the solemnity of music and have expressed their devotions with a
song.” (Quoted by Dr. A. S. Hoyt in his _Public Worship for
Non-Liturgical Churches_.)
[2]“Our hymns spring out of religious experience at its best, and they
tend to lift experience to its highest levels. The very cream of
truth and of soul life is gathered into them. They contain the
refined riches, the precious essences, the cut and polished jewels
of Christianity in all ages. They are truly prophetic, the records
of the insight and intuition and rapture of the seer and the
saint.” (Dr. Waldo S. Pratt, in _Musical Ministries_. [New York:
Revell Co., 1915.] Used by permission.)
[3]Henry Ward Beecher placed a high value on the song service of the
church: “I have never loved men under any circumstances as I have
loved them while singing with them; never at any other time have I
been so near heaven with you, as in those hours when our songs
were wafted thitherward.”
[4]“In all great religious movements the people have been inspired
with a passion for singing. They have sung their creed: it seems
the freest and most natural way of declaring their triumphant
belief in great Christian truths, forgotten or denied in previous
times of spiritual depression and now restored to their rightful
place in the thought and life of the Church. Song has expressed
and intensified their enthusiasm, their new faith, their new joy,
their new determination to do the will of God.” (Dr. W. R. Dale.)
[5]Pratt, _Musical Ministries_.
[6]Ephesians 5: 18-20.
[7]Colossians 3: 16.
[8]I Corinthians 14: 15.
[9]Over three-quarters of a century ago, this lament was made by a
prominent New England minister: “Many a man, who carefully
interrogates his own experience, will confess that, while the
voice of public prayer readily engages his attention and carries
with it his devout desires, it is not so with the act of praise;
that he very seldom finds his affections rising upon its notes to
heaven—very seldom can he say at its close that he has worshiped
God. The song has been wafted near him as a vehicle for conveying
upward the sweet odor of a spiritual service, but the offering has
been withheld, and the song ascends as empty of divine honors as a
sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” (Rev. Daniel L. Furber, in
_Hymns and Choirs_.)