Excerpt from The New Congregational Hymn and Tune Book: For Public, Social, and Private Worship
The design of this book is to furnish a copious variety and.supply of our most highly esteemed and precious hymns and tunes for the use of Christians in public, social, domestic, and private worship.
"Praise is comely for the upright," and to admonish one another "in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs," is the express command of Holy Writ. We find, also, that it was the constant practice of the early Christians to spend a portion of their time, when two or three were met in Jesus' name, in singing praises to the Lord. At the close of the "last supper," they sang a hymn before they left the table; after Jesus had ascended, they "were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God;" at midnight, Paul and Silas in the prison "prayed, and sang praises unto God;" and we learn from Pliny that Christians were wont to meet together and "sing among themselves, alternately, a hymn to Christ as God." In obedience, then, to an order from the Lord; in accordance with the practice of the early Christians; in consideration of the power of music over the emotions, and of the strong and steady impulse of the soul to express its sorrows even as its joys and raptures, and its profoundest sense of adoration, in sacred melody and song, - the church must ever, in her "holy convocations," assign to lyric poetry and to music a position very prominent and commanding; and as she moves onward, rejoicing in the strength of her illustrious Leader, "conquering and to conquer," she will, doubtless, bring more frequently her joyful strains of praise to him for her triumphant victories.
Even at this period of her reviving splendor, she calls for "new songs " of adoration; she sings with a new inspiration, and solicits every tongue to bring its tribute of praise to her Redeemer's glory ; and the more clearly she beholds that glory, the more devoutly, the more frequently, the more joyously, will she sing.
The time, it is believed, is not far distant when the singing in the sanctuary will come down from the choir to the congregation, and when all the people, "both young men and maidens, old men and children," will unite to swell the anthem of praise to Jehovah.
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