its utterance rather in works of mercy than in songs of praise? Have we not all to be especially on our guard that we do not make our worship merely public service, and so fail to make our service worship? In our own free age and country, when opportunities for doing good are so multiplied, when there is not a talent or a grace but may find its own full and appropriate exercise in the great field of work, may we not learn something from the men of those more fettered days, when Christian life, hemmed in on all sides but one, rose with all its force towards the heavens, from which no human tyranny could shut it out? And thus may we learn more to seek communion with God, not merely as the strength for work, but as the end and crown of all work; not chiefly as the means of life, but its highest object.

Not, indeed, that active and contemplative piety are opposed to each other. Martha's service would have been more efficient had it been less cumbered, had she listened as well as served. Mary, when the time came, could anoint the feet at which she had loved to sit, with ointment whose perfume filled the house. And those who serve God best of all are those who " see His face."

Nor in these busy times of ours has the service of song ceased on earth; the melody in the heart flows on still, and gushes forth in music; and it is not of an extinct species that we think when we search out those old hymns. The accents of the first singers are no dead language to us, and their life is ours. The first hymn re

corded in the Bible is also the last

the song chanted

first on the shores of the Red Sea, echoes back to us from the "sea of glass mingled with fire.”

Of the mode of worship in the old patriarchal times, we know little; but, surely, music was not only heard in the city of Cain. Earth can never have been without her song to God. The first wave of promise which flowed in to cover the first wave of sin, must have found its response in the heart of man; but after the first universal hymn of Eden was broken, and the music of creation fell into a minor, whilst the wail of human sin and sorrow ran across all its harmonies, a long silence reigns in the hymn-book of the Church universal; and through all the records of violence and judgment, from the flood and the ark, from patriarchal tent and Egyptian kingdom, the only song which has reached us is the wail of a murderer echoing the curse of Cain.

We read of altar and sacrifice, of meditations in the fields at eventide, of visions, and prayers, and accepted intercessions, and we feel sure that those who walked in the light, like Enoch or Abraham, must have had their hearts kindled into music. But from the green earth rising out of the flood; from the shadow of the great oak at Mamre; from the fountains and valleys and upland pastures of the Promised Land, where the tents of the patriarchs rose amidst their flocks; from the prisons and palaces of Egypt, we catch no sound of sacred song. So far the stream flows for us underground.

The first recorded hymn in the Bible is the utterance of the national thanksgiving of Israel by the Red Sea. When the Church becomes visible, her voice becomes audible. The waves flowed back to their ancient tide-marks, the pathway through the sea was hidden for ever, and, with it, the hosts of the enemies of God and of Israel. The way

of escape had become the wall of demarcation, and looking back on that sea, with all its buried secrets, above its ripple and its roar the song burst from the lips of Moses and the children of Israel.

It was a type of all the psalms which have been sung on earth since. It was a song of victory. It was a song of redemption. It was sung to the Lord." The silence of the dead was beneath that sea, the silence of the desert was around it, and there first it is written that the Song of Redemption pierced through the long wail of the Fall. There the first notes of that great chant of victory were chanted which echo along the crystal sea, far, far beyond our hearing, into the depths of eternity.

That song has never ceased since on this earth. One dying voice has carried on its accents to another. From time to time it bursts on our ears in a chorus of triumph; at times, even Elijah can hear no voice but his own. But God has heard it ceaselessly, we may not doubt; and while some tones, loud and musical in man's ears, have failed to pierce beyond the atmosphere of earth, countless melodies, inaudible to us, have reached His ear, and been welcomed by His smile.

Among the many books which God has caused to be written for us to make up His One Book,-family records, royal chronicles, histories of the past and future, proverb and prophecy, we have one book which speaks not so much to man from God as to God for man. In the Book of Psalms the third person of the historical narratives, the "Thus saith the Lord" of the law and the prophets, is exchanged for the supplicating or rejoicing "O Lord, my God," "Unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing." Beginning

often in the tumultuous depths, these psalms soar into the calm light of heaven. An inspired liturgy for all time, and the prophetic utterance of a sorrow which knew no equal, they are yet the natural expression of the struggles and hopes, the repentings and thanksgivings of the human hearts who first spoke them. These also are part of that one wondrous hymn of redeemed man to God. It is one warfare, and, therefore, one battle-song suits all alike. Like the other true hymns of the Church militant, David's psalms were written in no soft literary retirement, but amidst the struggles of a most eventful and active life. The battle-songs of the Church are written on the battle-field; her poets are singers because they are believers.

When David fled from Absalom his son, his heart lifted itself up to "the Lord, his shield;" when Shimei cursed him, he sang praises to the name of the Lord most high; looking up to the rocks and the wild hill-fortresses among which he had taken refuge from Saul, he called on "the Lord, his fortress and his high tower;" from the flocks he led by green pastures and still waters, in his peaceful youth, his heart turned to "the Lord, his shepherd;" awaking in agony from his great sin, he uttered those selfdespairing, yet most trustful words, on which the sighs of repenting sinners have taken wing to God during three thousand years.

It cannot be without purpose that more is revealed to us of the life of the sweet Singer of Israel than of any other man. Otherwise, might we not have thought the song of praise is only for the comparatively sinless; that sighs, not songs, become the penitent, however freely the "much"

is forgiven? and thus many a precious box of costly perfume might have been held back in shame, and we might have missed the lesson that the deepest music of the Church is mingled with her tears.

David did indeed appoint an "order of singers," and he set them, we are told by Nehemiah, over the business of the house of God. And, no doubt, the Lord of the temple has also His own "order," especially endowed and trained for this work, to whom, as the king to those singers of the old temple, He appoints a certain portion "due every day." Yet in that new temple, which is rising silently day by day, all the stones are musical when struck by the right hand; every voice has its own especial psalm for its own especial joy; and the richest songs have sometimes been sung by those who sang but one, and whose names are lost to us for ever.

From time to time, throughout the Old Testament, we catch fresh notes of the song. There is the mystical Song of Songs, reaching, in its full meaning, to the great marriage-day, when the Voice which can be heard in the grave shall say, "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, and the time of the singing is come." There is the chant of Deborah the prophetess, and the hymn of Hannah, borne along through her own individual joy to the great undying source of joy, the Child born to redeem. There is the song of Jehoshaphat and his army, the chant of victory sung in faith before the battle, and itself doing battle, in that the Lord fought for those who trusted Him, and they had nothing to do but to divide the spoil and return to Jerusalem, with psalteries and harps and trumpets, into