Go into any Christian church and you will hear the choir and the
congregation singing lies. Is it not time to stop it? Is music married
irrevocably to falsehood? Take up an ordinary hymn-book and you will
hardly find a sensible line in it. The entire contents of the book is
about God, heaven, salvation, and other equally unknown quantities, states
and conditions. Why not sing sense? Why not sing facts? Why not sing
truth? Why not sing the glories of Nature, of life, of man?
Music is a wonderful power, a wonderful educator of the feelings and
emotions. It is essential, therefore, that music be inspired by what is
true, by what is good, by what is right. Truth should be set to music and
the lips taught to sing what science has discovered, what art has done,
what the universe reveals, what the world is living for.
The common Christian music is a wail of despair, a cry of sorrow, a shriek
of fear. It is composed of false conceptions of Nature, of humanity, of
life. It is a “doleful sound.” The triumph of faith which it celebrates is
not a full, round, complete joy.
The Church does not know the music of laughter, the music of the heart.
Its song seems always to hover on the brink of fear. It is not the glad
note of natural freedom, but the uncertain joy of the escaped convict.
The free song must come from the free heart, must denote the free thought.
Let life that is healthy, happy and human be set to music. Let us sing as
we live, as we think, as we feel. The music of the hand, the mind, the
heart, should be on the lips. If we could only sing what sings through us,
the world would listen with rapture. We do not want “harmonious madness”
nor harmonious idiocy. Pious music is stupid, false. It is inspired by the
sickness of the world. We need a stronger note, a sturdier song.
Lies enough have been sung. Let truth now fill the air. Out of the great
hope of the race let new songs come. We are beginning to live for life on
earth, for happiness here, for love here, for victory here. Let the hands
and feet, the brains and hearts of men and women move to the music of
truth.
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There is not a village where poverty does not pinch the stomach or starve
the mind, where misery does not need charity and where wealth could not
bless.
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Piety could do nothing better than imitate morality.