VII.

Temple Music.

1 Chron. xvi. 41, 42; 2 Chron. v. 12, 13.

'OR the worship of the Temple, or of the

FOR

Tabernacle rather, since as yet the ark of the covenant of the Lord remained under curtains, King David appointed Heman* and Jeduthun, and

* Connected with the name of HEMAN there is a Curiosity of Literary Blundering on recent record. Robert Southey, as one narrator of it tells us, took some pains to give a correct text of the Pilgrim's Progress; and in his edition, Hopeful having wondered why Littlefaith had not plucked up a heart and stood one brush with such a company of cowards as the three brothers Faintheart, Mistrust, and Guilt, when they robbed and wounded him in Deadman's Lane, Christian replies that many had called them cowards, but few had found it so in the time of trial; that they had made David groan, mourn, and roar, had sorely brushed the coats of Mordecai and Hezekiah, though champions in their days, and had handled Peter so that they made him afraid of a sorry girl. Now, as the critical detective remarks, it seems a thing for wonder that Bunyan should have ranked Mordecai with David, Hezekiah, and Peter; but in truth he did not. "He

114

HEMAN AND HAMAN.

chosen others, expressed by name, to give thanks to the Lord, because His mercy endureth for ever: "And with them Heman and Jeduthun, with trumpets and cymbals for those that should make a sound, and with musical instruments of God." In His house should they praise Him, with the sound of the trumpet, praise Him with the psaltery and harp, praise Him with the timbrel and pipe, praise Him with stringed instruments and organs, praise Him upon the loud cymbals, praise Him upon the high-sounding cymbals,—teaching by example everything that hath breath to praise the Lord.— When the Tabernacle of David gave place to the Temple of Solomon, the Levites which were the

had set in the place which Southey gives to Mordecai one who may be the man celebrated as second in wisdom to Solomon, and certainly was a psalmist who in spiritual darkness and terror cried from the lowest deep as a castaway. This was Heman. Some editor who had never heard Heman's name-like the mere matter-of-fact godfather who, being ask to give the child a Bible name, proposed Baal-zebub-took the next text that came, and changed Heman to Haman. Then Southey, or the editor from whom he copied, assured that Bunyan could not have numbered Haman among the champions of the faith, concluded that since it was not Haman it must be Mordecai. Mr. Offer has pointed out the progress of this error, which in all probability was overlooked, not invented, by Southey." One or two cognate cases of literary blundering are exposed in the Saturday Review, vol. xxxi., p. 338.

C

CHORAL UNISON.

115

singers, all of them of Asaph, of Heman, of Jedu-
thun, with their sons and their brethren, were
present at the consecration, arrayed in white linen,
having cymbals and psalteries and harps, and with
them an hundred and twenty priests sounding with
trumpets; and it came even to pass, as the trum-
peters and singers were as one,—a choral unison
like that commemorated by Wordsworth among
the mountains, when, after a day of flooding rains,
loud was the vale-

"A mighty unison of streams
Of all her voices, one !"-

to make one sound to be heard in praising and
thanking the Lord; and when they lifted up their
voice (of all those voices one) with the trumpets and
cymbals and instruments of music, and praised the
Lord, saying, For He is good; for His mercy
endureth for ever: that then the house was filled
with a cloud, even the house of the Lord; so
that the priests could not stand to minister by
reason of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord
had filled the house of God-which glory, never-
theless, so far as that house was concerned, was to
be done away. The Temple made with hands was
to be dissolved; indeed Temple after Temple was
to dislimn like the baseless fabric of a vision,
leaving not onestone upon another, leaving not

116 STRINGED AND WIND INSTRUMENTS.

a rack behind. But music should survive that Temple, and all Temples. Heaven should be without a Temple, but in Heaven music should never cease. "I saw no Temple therein," declares the Revealer, St. John the Divine. But he heard music, such as mortal ear elsewhere never heard, neither had it entered into the heart of man to conceive.

In order to give the best effect to the music of the tabernacle, David made a division of the four thousand Levites into twenty-four classes, who sang psalms, and accompanied them with music. Jahn gives a separate account, one by one, in his Archæologia Biblica, of the various instruments in use among the Hebrews; whose music, he casually remarks, may be thought to have been too loud and noisy, "but opinion depends much on personal habits and experience." Of stringed instruments he treats in succession of the most ancient of its class, the harp, to which Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities assigns twelve strings, a small bow (plectrum) being used in his time, though the instrument was originally played with the hand only; and the psaltery, called in the Psalms “a ten-stringed instrument," though Josephus gives twelve for ten; while of wind instruments the most noteworthy are the so-called organ, nearly

CONCERTED MUSIC.

117

equivalent to Pan's pipe; the horn or crooked trumpet-whether made of the horns of oxen, or of rams' horns, or of brass fashioned to resemble these; and the straight trumpet, a cubit in length, an instrument largely in use, alike in peace and in war, though sounded in different tones for such different issues. Tabrets, timbrels, and cymbals were also in established use. From Babylon were adopted various other instruments, if not all comprised in the compendious list iterated and reiterated in the Book of Daniel,-of cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music. Concerted music, of however simple and rude a character, is of patriarchal antiquity; there is a hint of the choral symphony in Laban's reproach of Jacob for stealing away secretly, instead of being dismissed with honour, after a festive parting, to be celebrated "with songs, with tabret, and with harp." Symphony, by the way, is the very word used in the Greek, when the prodigal son in the parable is welcomed back with a similar manifestation-for as the elder brother, out in the fields, drew nigh to the house, he heard συμφωνίας. The symphonies of Jewish temple-service appear to have been mainly, if not exclusively, choral; that is, with the intermingling of voices. Devoted (not to say devout) admirers of the modern symphony in its most perfect form, are apt to be jealous