Favorite Songs and Hymns For School and Home, page: 0236

450 Of The World's Best Songs And Hymns, With Lyrics & Sheet music for voice & piano.

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	Ik we take this central image of Song, and ask why it is used to describe Heaven, the future of regenerated humanity, the answer would be�because of its fitness If this final condition were defined in bare words it would be as follows: Obedience, Sympathy, Feel ing or Emotion, and Adoiation. These, in a sense constitute Heaven, or the state of regenerated hu inanity. By the consent of all ages, Heaven has been represented under a conception of music, and will be in all ages to come. It is subjected to many sneers, but the sneer is very shallow. The human mind must have some form under which it can think of its destiny. It is not content to leave it in vagueness.	It is a real world we are in, and we are real men and women in it. We dwell in mystery and within lim-tations, but over and above the mystery and the limi�tation is an indestructible sense of reality. I am, and I know that I am. Standing on this solid rock, I find reality about me, nor can I be persuaded that other beings and things are dreams or shadows. It is in my very nature to believe in reality, and so I demand definite conceptions, nor can I rest in vagueness or be content with formless visions and their abstractions.' Thus the human mind has always worked and thus it always will work�leaving behind it the logicians and plodders in science, in the free exercise of the logic
	AFTER.
	pf human nature. I do not absolutely know what sort of a world this will be when it is regenerated, but I must have some conception of it. I do not abso�lutely know what Heaven is like�it will be like only lo itself�but if I think of it at all, I must do so under >ome present definite conception. The highest forms under which we can now think are art-forms�the proportion of statuary and architecture, color of paint�ing, and music. The former are limited and address a mere sense of beauty, but music addresses the heart and has its vocation amongst the feelings and covers their whole range. Hence music has been	chosen to hold and express our conception of moral perfection. Nor is it an arbitrary choice, but it is made for the reasons that music is the utterance of the heart, it is an expression of morality, and it is an infinite language. Before the sneer at Heaven as a piace of endless song can prevail, it must undo all this stout logic of the human heart. We so represent it because when we frame our conception of Heaven or moral perfection, we find certain things, and when we look into the nature and operations of music, we find again the same things, namely: Obedience, Sympathy, Emotion, Adoration.�Rev. T. T. Munger.