which I find figured in Fritz Hommel's History of Babylonia and Assyria, there is a representation of a harp with twelve strings, and a musician standing by with outstretched hand fingering the middle string. "The following citation from Mr. Pinches' Babylonian Texts shows that music accompanied the sacrifices (Sayce's Hibbert Lectures, 1887, appendix iv., p. 514): In the month of life and the festivals of sacrifices may glad music be sounded. Let the four zones behold his countenance. To those that bring (?) his nourishers may he grant life and goodness of heart!'"' There Among the Greeks and Romans, the people were, as a rule, exhorted to be silent when the sacrificial rite-the slaying of the victim-was in actual process of accomplishment. Euphemeite, or favete linguis was the formula addressed to the crowd upon such solemn occasions; the people waited in prayerful awe and silence, that no illstarred utterance might mar the sacrificial omens. may have been on special occasions the chanting of a solemn litany. Great public festivals were celebrated with song-the Dithyrambic lays were sung at the festival in honour of Dionysos. There were also the songs of the Priests of Mars, and of the Fratres Arvales, of which Mommsen gives examples in his "History of Rome." Horace's "Carmen Sæculare" furnishes another illustration of the compositions which were probably used among the Romans. But so far as the material before us enables us to form an opinion, it is that hymns, as an essential of worship, have been mostly characteristic of the Christian, and in less degree, of its progenitor, the Hebrew religion. Nor is this much to be wondered at, since it is the only religion calculated to draw out at once the two elements necessary to such a form of worship-awe and loveawe which lies at the heart of worship, and love which kindles it into adoring song. For this, Brahmanism is too metaphysical, Buddhism too much opposed to the utterance of its emotion, if indeed it has any, Confucianism too much of a morality-too little of a religion, Mohammedanism too fatalistic in its conception of God. For it must never be forgotten that the character of worship is determined by the worshipper's conception of the Being to whom it is offered. Where the conception does not waken emotion there is little song in its worship, for song is the child not of philosophy but of feeling. None of these religions have aroused feelings which could only find adequate expression as the worshippers exclaimed, "O come let us sing unto the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation." But it is to the Hebrew race that we must turn to find the noblest conception of God, and as a consequence the truest conception of worship-a conception in which awe before His greatness and emotion before His goodness are combined. In that, rather than in any other race, we discover the true origin of hymnody. There the religious nature of man more fully asserts itself—there the inner thought of his heart gets earliest and best expression. It is not strange, therefore, that this race so richly endowed with the religious element should have been chosen for the grand mission of giving to the world the noblest conception of worship. Their fitness for this mission sprang naturally from that conception of God as a person, which the more firmly it is grasped, the more real the worship becomes; whilst we cannot fail to observe that their hymnody becomes more tender as this idea of the personality of God is enlarged by the recognition of his gracious and lovable attributes. And as this people undoubtedly possessed a nature disposed to musical expression, it is not surprising that we find among them so spontaneous and early a development of worship-song. It is in this Hebrew race we find the true rise and onward flow of the river of song. CHAPTER II. HYMNS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. THE hymns of the Old Testament were not originated by Divine command, but were, as we have indicated, the spontaneous outflow of the religious nature. No form of worship requiring song was instituted by Moses. No order of singers is included among the officers of the Tabernacle. Indeed, the earliest history of the chosen race is practically without song. As it has been said, we read of altar 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 with music; but from the green earth rising out of the flood-from the shadow of the great rock 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." But then this is a subject with which history did not concern itself-and we must not infer from this silence the utter absence of song-for scattered over the earlier history there are traces of its presence. The first examples, as we should expect, are of a very informal character-the product of some crisis in the life of the individual or the nation. Improvised songs born of great occasions, though to our colder western temperament almost impossible, are yet comparatively common among Eastern people like the Hebrews, even to this day. It is a common gift among the Italians.* The first of such songs is that of Miriam in celebration of the delivery of Israel from their Egyptian pursuers-"Sing ye to Jehovah, for He hath triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea," but although this is the first recorded, it is almost certain that it was preceded by others; since before this we read of instruments of music. For since the two greatest fountains of song have ever been love and religion, we may feel sure that those who had reached to the use of musical instruments, however rude, would employ them to accompany the words of passion or devotion, which in exalted moments would spring to their lips. In Gen. iv. 21, we are told that "Jubal was the father of all such as handle the harp and the pipe," that is, of all string and wind instruments. Whilst in verses 23, 24 we have Lamech's song to his wives-the first example of a song, though not a sacred one, in the pages of Scripture, yet possessing many of the features of later Semitic poetry. Later on we read in the account of *Professor Dowden records a striking instance of this in his life of Shelley, when the poet and his wife in Pisa listened to the improvisation of Signor Sgricci, an Italian of about 23 years of age. Members of the audience inscribed subjects for poetry on slips of paper which were thrown into a vase from which a boy drew one paper at a time at random, and the subject was announced, on which the Italian poured forth his unpremeditated verse. It seemed," says Mary Shelley," not the work of a human mind, but as if he were the instrument played upon by the superhuman inspiration of God." And is it not true that the highest poetry comes, in the first instance, as an improvisation? Is there not a very close connection between inspiration and improvisation? |