Favorite Songs and Hymns For School and Home, page: 0294

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

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Sacred history declares that music and song were very frequently employed among the Hebrews on oc�casions of solemnity, in both their domestic and re�ligious life. Immense choirs, with their thousand voices, were retained in the Temple to celebrate their feasts and victories, and a great number of books and treatises have been written, but with little satisfaction, upon the music of the Jews. It is not, however, un�interesting to follow out or trace the history of religious song, as found in the sacred record, the Bible, and to notice the musical solemnities of which it makes men�tion. In Genesis, Jubal is named as being " the father
of all such as handle the harp and organ," but not as the inventor of music, as many have supposed jr de�clared. Not until six hundred years after the deluge does the record again speak of music, which is at the time when Jacob is pursued by Laban: �� Wherefore didst thou flee away secretly, and steal away from me, and didst not tell me, that I might have sent thee away with mirth, and with songs, with tabret and with harp ?" Two hundred and forty-eight years after, at the passage of the Red Sea, the first religious song was intoned by Moses and the Hebrew people: " I will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed glo-
ALL THE SAINTS ADORE THEE.
J. B. Dykes. K. Hubs.
riously, the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea." Again, in Numbers, it speaks of trumpets, and the manner of blowing them on different occa�sions, as signals for assembling, departure, or alarm. The schofar, a wind instrument made from the horn of a ram, is reserved for the celebration of the first day of Tischri. After the death of Moses, the sacred writings preserve entire silence upon the subject of music, even to the time of the Judges, when is re�corded the second song sung by Deborah and Barak : " Praise the Lord for the avenging of Israel," and a hundred years later occurred the sad and tragic death
of the daughter of Jephthah. After this event, even to the time of Samuel, there is no musical record in the sacred writings. He instituted a school of proph�ets, where song and music were, undoubtedly, an im�portant branch of education. Saul, soon after his coronation, encounters a troop of men inspired by the Holy Spirit, prophesying to the sound of instruments. At their approach he is seized with a divine inspira�tion and prophesies with them. Subsequently, be-coming a prey to melancholy, he calls the youthful David to his side, who, by his inspired songs, dissi-pates the dark torments that overshadowed his soul.
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