Making a Joyful Noise
Don't look as if your religion hurt you.--BILLY SUNDAY.
"He hath put a new song in my mouth." That is real religion which sets
the saints to singing. Gloomy Christians are a poor advertisement of
the Gospel. There is nothing of gloom about a Billy Sunday revival.
Shrewd students of the campaigns have often remarked that there are
so few tears and so much laughter at the evangelist's services. There
is scarcely one of Sunday's sermons in which he does not make the
congregation laugh. All of his work is attuned to the note of vitality,
robustness and happiness. Concerning the long-faced Christian Sunday
says:
"Some people couldn't have faces any longer if they thought God was
dead. They ought to pray to stop looking so sour. If they smile it
looks like it hurts them, and you're always glad when they stop
smiling. If Paul and Silas had had such long faces as some church
members have on them when they went into the Philippian jail, the
jailer would never have been saved. There never was a greater mistake
than to suppose that God wants you to be long-faced when you put on
your good clothes. You'd better not fast at all if you give the devil
all the benefit. God wants people to be happy.
"The matter with a lot of you people is that your religion is not
complete. You have not yielded yourself to God and gone out for God
and God's truth. Why, I am almost afraid to make some folks laugh for
fear that I will be arrested for breaking a costly piece of antique
bric-à-brac. You would think that if some people laughed it would break
their faces. I want to tell you that the happy, smiling, sunny-faced
religion will win more people to Jesus Christ than the miserable old
grim-faced kind will in ten years. I pity any one who can't laugh.
There must be something wrong with their religion or their liver. The
devil can't laugh.
"'Oh, laugh and the world laughs with you,
Weep and you weep alone;
'Tis easy enough to be pleasant
When life moves along like a song;
But the man worth while is the man who can smile
When everything goes dead wrong.'
"Don't look as if religion hurt you. Don't look as if you had on a
number two shoe when you ought to be wearing a number five. I see some
women who look as if they had the toothache. That won't win anyone for
Christ. Look pleasant. Look as if religion made you happy, when you had
it.
"Then there is music. When you get to heaven you'll find that not all
have been preached there. They have been sung there. God pity us when
music is not for the glory of God. Some of you will sing for money and
for honor, but you won't sing in the church. Much of the church music
today is all poppycock and nonsense. Some of these high-priced sopranos
get up in church and do a little diaphragm wiggle and make a noise like
a horse neighing. I don't wonder the people in the congregation have a
hard time of it."
So Sunday sets the city to singing. His sermons are framed in
music--and not music that is a performance by some soloist, but music
that ministers to his message. His gospel is sung as well as preached.
The singing is as essential a part of the service as the sermon.
Everybody likes good music, especially of a popular sort. Sunday sees
that this taste is gratified.
The Tabernacle music in itself is enough to draw the great throngs
which nightly crowd the building. The choir furnishes not only the
melodies but also a rare spectacle. This splendid regiment of helpers
seated back of the speaker affects both the eyes and the ears of the
audiences. Without his choirs Sunday could scarcely conduct his great
campaigns. These helpers are all volunteers, and their steadfast
loyalty throughout weeks of strenuous meetings in all kinds of weather
is a Christian service of the first order.
[Illustration: "SOME OF THESE HIGH-PRICED SOPRANOS GET UP IN CHURCH AND
MAKE A NOISE LIKE A HORSE NEIGHING."]
True, membership in a Sunday choir is in itself an avocation, a social
and religious interest that enriches the lives of the choir members.
They "belong" to something big and popular. They have new themes for
conversation. New acquaintances are made. The associations first formed
in the Sunday choir have in many cases continued as the most sacred
relations of life. The brightest spot in the monotony of many a young
person's life has been his or her membership in the Billy Sunday choir.
The choir also has the advantage of a musical drill and experience
which could be secured in no other fashion. All the advantages of
trained leadership are given in return for the volunteer service.
Incidentally, the choir members know that they are serving their
churches and their communities in a deep and far-reaching fashion.
Many visitors to the Sunday Tabernacle are surprised to find that the
music is of such fine quality. There is less "religious rag-time" than
is commonly associated with the idea of revival meetings. More than a
fair half of the music sung is that which holds an established place in
the hymnody of all churches.
There is more to the music of a campaign than the volume of singing
by the choir, with an occasional solo by the chorister or some chosen
person. A variety of ingenious devices are employed to heighten the
impression of the music. Thus a common antiphonal effect is obtained
by having the choir sing one line of a hymn and the last ten rows of
persons in the rear of the Tabernacle sing the answering line. The old
hymn "For You I am Praying" is used with electrical effect in this
fashion. Part singing is employed in ways that are possible only to
such a large chorus as the musical director of the Sunday campaigns has
at his command.
A genius for mutuality characterizes the Sunday song services. The
audiences are given a share in the music. Not only are they requested
to join in the singing, but they are permitted to choose their favorite
hymns, and frequently the choir is called upon to listen while the
audience sings.
Various delegations are permitted to sing hymns of their own choice.
Diversity, and variety and vim seem to be the objective of the musical
part of the program. From half an hour to an hour of this varied music
introduces each service. When the evangelist himself is ready to
preach, the crowd has been worked up into a glow and fervor that make
it receptive to his message.
If some stickler for ritual and stateliness objects that these services
are entirely too informal, and too much like a political campaign, the
partisan of Mr. Sunday will heartily assent. These are great American
crowds in their every-day humor. These evangelistic meetings are not
regular church services. It has already been made plain that there is
no "dim religious light" about the Sunday Tabernacle meetings.
It is a tribute to the comprehensiveness of the Sunday method that they
bring together the most representative gatherings imaginable every
day under the unadorned rafters of the big wooden shell called the
Tabernacle. Shrewdly, the evangelist has made sure of the democratic
quality of his congregation. He has succeeded in having the gospel sing
its way into the affection and interest of every-day folk.
It is no valid objection to the Sunday music that it is so thoroughly
entertaining. The Tabernacle crowds sing, not as a religious duty,
but for the sheer joy of singing. One of the commonest remarks heard
amid the crowd is "I never expect to hear such singing again till I
get to Heaven." It is real Christian ministry to put the melodies of
the Gospel into the memories of the multitudes, and to brighten with
the songs of salvation the gray days of the burden-bearers of the
world. Boys and men on the street whistle Gospel songs. The echoes
of Tabernacle music may be heard long after Mr. Sunday has gone from
a community in ten thousand kitchens and in the shops and factories
and stores of the community. This is the strategy of "the expulsive
power of a new affection." These meetings give to Christians a new and
jubilant affirmation, instead of a mere defense for their faith. The
campaign music carries the campaign message farther than the voice of
any man could ever penetrate.
Upon the place of music in the Christian life Sunday says: "For sixteen
years there had been no songs in Jerusalem. It must have been a great
loss to the Jews, for everywhere we read we find them singing. They
sang all the way to the Red Sea, they sang when Jesus was born, they
sang at the Last Supper and when Jesus was arisen.
"Song has always been inseparably associated with the advancement of
God's word. You'll find when religion is at low ebb the song will
cease. Many of the great revivals have been almost entirely song.
The great Welsh revival was mostly song. In the movements of Martin
Luther, Wesley, Moody and Torrey you will find abundance of song. When
a church congregation gets at such low ebb that they can't sing and
have to hire a professional choir to sing for them, they haven't got
much religion. And some of those choir members are so stuck up they
won't sing in a chorus. If I had a bunch like that they'd quit or I
would.
"Take the twenty-fourth Psalm, 'Lift up your heads, O ye gates,' and
the thirty-third Psalm. They were written by David to be sung in the
temple.
"I can imagine his singing them now. They were David's own experiences.
Look at them. Now you hear an old lobster get up to give an experience,
'Forty years ago I started forth--.' The same old stereotyped form.
"There's many a life today which has no song. The most popular song for
most of you would be,
"'Where is that joy which once I knew,
When first I loved the Lord?'"
Right behind you where you left it when you went to that card party;
right where you left it when you began to go to the theater; right
where you left it when you side-stepped and backslid; right where you
left it when you began paying one hundred dollars for a dress and gave
twenty-five cents to the Lord; right where you left it when you began
to gossip."