Nehemiah 7:67

Neh_7:67

And they had two hundred forty and five singing men and singing women.

Church music

The captives in the text had music left in them, and if they could find, amid all their trials, two hundred and forty and five singing men and singing women, then in this day of gospel sunlight and freedom from all persecution there ought to be a great multitude of men and women willing to sing the praises of God. All our churches need arousal on this subject. Those who can sing must throw their souls into the exercise, and those who cannot sing must learn how, and it shall be heart to heart, voice to voice, and the music shall swell jubilant with thanksgiving and tremulous with pardon. Have you ever noticed the construction of the human throat as indicative of what God means us to do with it ? In only an ordinary throat and lungs there are fourteen direct muscles that produce 16,888 sounds, and thirty indirect muscles that produce 173,741,828 sounds, and the human voice can produce seventeen trillion, five hundred and ninety-two billion, one hundred and eighty-six million, forty-four thousand, four hundred and fifteen different sounds. What does that mean? It means that you should sing! Do you suppose that God, who gives us such a musical instrument as that, intends us to keep it shut? Suppose some great tyrant should get possession of the musical instruments of the world, and should lock up the organ of Westminster Abbey, and the organ of Lucerne, and the organ at Haarlem, and the organ at Freiburg, and all the other great musical instruments of the world--you would call such a man as that a monster; and yet you are more wicked if, with the human voice--a musical instrument of more wonderful adaptation than all the musical instruments that man ever created--you shut it against the praise of God.

I. Music seems to have been born in the soul of the world. The omnipotent voice with which God commanded the world into being seems to linger yet with its majesty and sweetness, and you hear it in the grain-field, in the swoop of the wind amid the mountain fastnesses, in canary's warble and in thunder-shock, in brook's tinkle and in ocean's paean. There are soft cadences in nature, and loud notes, some of which we cannot hear at all, and others are so terrific that we cannot appreciate them. The animalcules have their music, and the spicula of hay and the globule of water are as certainly resonant with the voice of God as the highest heavens in which the armies of the redeemed celebrate their victories. When the breath of the flower strikes the air and the wing of the firefly cleaves it, there is sound and there is melody ; and as to those utterances of nature which seem harsh and overwhelming, it is as when you stand in the midst of a great orchestra, and the sound almost rends your ear because you are too near to catch the blending Of the music.

II. Music seems dependent on the laws of acoustics and mathematics, and yet where these laws are not understood at all the art is practised There are to-day five hundred musical journals in China. Two thousand years before Christ the Egyptians practised this art. Pythagoras learned it. Lasus, of Hermione, wrote essays on it. Plato and Aristotle introduced it into their schools; but I have not much interest in that. My chief interest is in the music of the Bible. The Bible, like a great harp with innumerable strings, swept by the fingers of inspiration, trembles with it. So far back as the fourth chapter of Genesis you find the first organist and harper--Jubal. So far back as the thirty-first chapter of Genesis you find the first choir. All up and down the Bible you find sacred music--at weddings, at inaugurations, at the treading of the wine-press. The Hebrews understood how to make musical signs above the musical text. When the Jews came from their distant homes to the great festivals at Jerusalem they brought harp and timbrel and trumpet, and poured along the great Judaean highways a river of harmony, until in and around the temple the wealth of a nations song and gladness had accumulated. All through the ages there has been great attention paid to sacred music. Ambrosius, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Charlemagne, gave it their mighty influence, and in our day the best musical genius is throwing itself on the altars of God. Handel, and Mozart, and Bach, and Durante, and Wolf, and scores of other men and women have given the best part of their genius to Church music. A truth in words is not half so mighty as a truth in song. Luthers sermons have been forgotten, but the Judgment Hymn he composed is resounding yet all through Christendom.

III. While there may be great varieties of opinion in regard to music, it seems to me that the general spirit of the word of God indicates what ought to be the great characteristics.

1. A prominent characteristic ought to be adaptiveness. Music that may be appropriate for a concert-hall or the opera-house or the drawing-room may be shocking in church. Glees, madrigals, ballads may be as innocent as psalms in their places. There is no reason why music should always be religious music. So I am in favour of concert-halls as well as churches. But church music has only one design, and that is devotion, and that which comes with the toss, the song, and the display of an opera-house is a hindrance to the worship. From such performances we go away saying, What splendid execution! Did you ever hear such a soprano? Which of those solos did you like the better? When, if we had been rightly wrought upon, we would have gone away saying, Oh! how my soul was lifted up in the presence of God while they were staging the first hymn; I never had such rapturous views of Jesus Christ as my Saviour as when they were singing that last doxology. There is an everlasting distinction between music as an art and music as a help to devotion. Though a Schumann composed it, though a Mozart played it, though a Sontag sang it, away with it if it does not make the heart better and honour Christ.

2. Correctness ought to be a characteristic of church music. God loves harmony, and we ought to love it. There is no devotion in a howl or yelp.

3. Another characteristic must be spirit and life. Music ought to rush from the audience like the water from a rock--clear, bright, sparkling. If all the other part of the church service is dull, do not have the music dull. With so many thrilling things to sing about, away with all drawling and stupidity. Let our song be like an acclamation of victory. You have a right to sing. Do not surrender your prerogative. If, in the performance of your duty, or the attempt at it, you should lose your place in the musical scale and be on C below when you ought to be on C above, or you should come in half a bar behind, we will excuse you. Still, it is better to do as Paul says, and sing with the spirit, and the understanding also.

4. Again, I remark, church music must be congregational. This opportunity must be brought down within the range of the whole audience. A song that the worshippers cannot sing is of no more use to them than a sermon in Choctaw. Let us wake up to this duty. Let us sing alone, sing in our families, sing in our schools, sing in our churches. I never shall forget hearing a Frenchman singing the Marseillaise Hymn on the Champs Elysees, Paris, just before the battle of Sedan. I never saw such enthusiasm before or since. As he sang that national air, oh I how the Frenchmen shouted. Have you ever in an English assemblage heard a band play God Save the Queen? If you have, you know something about the enthusiasm of a national air. Now, I tell you that these songs we sing Sabbath by Sabbath are the national airs of Jesus Christ and of the kingdom of heaven, and if you do not learn to sing them here, how do you ever expect to sing the song of Moses and the Lamb? (T. De Witt Talmage.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

67. two hundred forty and five] So 1Es_5:41, Ezr_2:65 ‘two hundred.’

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Two hundred and forty-five singing men and singing women. Ezra says 200; but this must be a round number. 1 Esdras confirms Nehemiah. (RAPC 1Est 5:42)

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.