God's Singers

r I HE robins are about. We saw one this morning. He was as welcome a messenger as the dove that flew back to Noah, to tell him that the waters were abated from off the face of the earth. This robin’s message is: “The winter is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come.’7 Within the next thirty days the first choir will be rehearsing in all the forests, and the orchards. We prisoners in the city will not hear much of the music; for our birds are mostly those quiet little quakers, the sparrows, who dress in plain grey, and cultivate silence in their meetings. But the country-folk will have concerts finer than Nilsson’s or Kellogg’s, without paying a copper for a ticket.

Singing plays a great part in God’s Word, and in God’s world. Just turn over your concordance, and see in how many passages the word occurs. The first song we read of was that jubilant anthem which rang out over the Red Sea, when Moses and the children of Israel “sang a song unto the Lord.” Was there no singing ever known before? There must have been. Jubal must have accompanied his harp with the voice. When Laban scolded Jacob for stealing away so slyly, he told him that he would have cheered his going “with songs and tabret and harp.” Perhaps Noah’s family relieved their loneliness in the ark by some lively household music. Nay; mother Eve may have crooned a lullaby over her first baby. The highest period of Jewish glory was the highest era of song. Her greatest king was the king of singers. “I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live,” exclaims the royal Psalmist. Our Divine Lord and his disciples certainly sang one hymn together; and it is likely that they often mingled their voices in the grand old

Hebrew melodies. Even the mighty God is described in the book of Zephaniah as rejoicing over Zion “with singing.”

What an exquisite touch that is in ancient Job where a “widow’s heart is made to sing for joy.” So Paul and Silas felt such inward gratitude and joy that even at midnight in their noxious and filthy dungeon, they pealed out God’s praises. Blessing on the triumphant grace that giveth songs in the night! When a soul is filled with the love of Jesus, the voice of praise is irrepressible. Martyrs’ cells, and beds of anguish, and hovels of bitterest poverty have all been cheered with holy song. During the late war, the suffering soldiers in the hospital used to ease their pains by singing “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds,” and “There’ll be no sorrow there.”

It is related of a Christian officer at the battle of Shiloh, that he lay all night on the field, fatally wounded in both thighs. He said, “The stars shone out clear over all the dark battle-field, and I began to think about that great God who had given his Son to die for me, and that he was up above those glorious stars. I felt that I ought to praise him, even while wounded and on that battle-ground.. I could not help singing that beautiful hymn ‘When I can read my title clear.’ There was a Christian brother in the brush near me. I could not see him; but I could hear him. He took up the strain. Another beyond him heard it, and joined in, and still others too. We made the field of battle ring with the hymns of praise to God.”

Here is a beautiful thought for all the followers of King Jesus. Life is a battle with many a sharp encounter, many an agonizing wound, many a hard bivouac. But we can “make it ring” with the voice of serene and triumphant praise. We do not sing enough. Our hearts should oftener warm with the mercies and promises, and loving-kindnesses of our God, until the lips should break forth into singing. Earth is the believer’s antechamber to heaven. Whatever else the redeemed may do in our Father’s house, we know that they sing there the new song of Moses and the Lamb. Heaven is vocal with God’s singers. Those anthems are born of a love that can not keep silent. And the purest and most perennial fountain of song on earth is a soul filled full with the presence of the Lord Jesus. Every forgiven, redeemed, heaven-bound heart should be a robin singing in the branches of the tree of life. While yonder bird’s mouth is filled with music, he does no harm, even to a worm. And we verily believe that those hours in life in which we do the least sinning, are those we spend in singing to our God.