Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet.
Musical instruments in worship
1. Albeit the typical ceremonies of musical instruments in God’s public worship, belonging to the pedagogy of the Church, in her minority before Christ, be now abolished with the rest of the ceremonies, yet the moral duties shadowed forth by them are still to be studied, because this duty of praising God, and praising Him with all our mind, strength and soul is moral, whereunto we are perpetually obliged.
2. The variety of musical instruments, some of them made use of in the camp, as trumpets; some of them more suitable to a peaceable condition, as psalteries and harps; some of them sounding by blowing wind in them; some of them sounding by lighter touching of them, as stringed instruments; some of them by beating on them more sharply, as tabrets, drums and cymbals; some of them sounding by touching and blowing also, as organs: all of them giving some certain sound, some more quiet, and some making more noise; some of them having a harmony by themselves; some of them making a consort with other instruments, or with the motions of the body in dancings, some of them serving for one use, some of them serving for another, and all of them serving to set forth God’s glory, and to shadow forth the duty of worshippers and the privileges of the saints. The plurality and variety, I say, of these instruments, were fit to represent divers conditions of the spiritual man, and of the greatness of the joy to be found in God, and to teach what stirring up should be of the affections and powers of our soul, and one of another, unto God’s worship; what harmony should be amongst worshippers of God, what melody each should mike in himself, singing to God with grace in his heart, and to show the excellency of God’s praise, which no means nor instrument, nor any expression of the body joined thereto, could sufficiently set forth; and thus much is figured forth in these exhortations to praise God with trumpet, etc. (D. Dickson.)
Office of music in Divine service
Thanksgiving, a consciousness of the goodness and glory of God, the soul’s joy in God--how seldom do you find an utterance of this in the prayers of the sanctuary. There is a provision, even in our churches, for the excitation and expression of praise. It is the song-service of the church. But the first and most fatal difficulty in this is that we have no religious music; or, rather, that the music of the church is for the sake of music, and not for the sake of praise, it expresses the aesthetic or art-feeling about praise--not heart-feeling. It is aimed at a wholly different thing from that which music was designed to be in the sanctuary. In the household, music aims at a domestic feeling. A mother’s lullaby is sung in the family. No one Would expect a mother to sit by the side of the cradle and attempt to sing Handel’s “Messiah,” or to execute the difficult passages of an opera. Something sweet--a simple carol--is the mother’s song. The child knows it, and feels it. It is aimed at a domestic effect. In songs of patriotism that express and excite that feeling the music becomes subordinate. The most patriotic tunes in vogue have no merit as tunes, but they possess a subtle element that stirs up a patriotic feeling in the heart, and it therefore answers the end of music. Multitudes of tunes in the church of God are hewn out of symphonies, and oratorios, and operas. They are music as operas, and oratorios, and symphonies, but they are trash in God’s house. In many cases the better a tune is, the worse it is in the service of the sanctuary. For the office of music in Divine service is praising. (H. W. Beecher.)