Nay, I would go further still, and say, Is not the righteous man
recompensed on the earth every time he hears a strain of noble music? To
him who has his treasure in heaven, music speaks about that treasure
things far too deep for words. Music speaks to him of whatsoever is
just, true, pure, lovely, and of good report, of whatsoever is manful and
ennobling, of whatsoever is worthy of praise and honour. Music, to that
man, speaks of a divine order and a divine proportion; of a divine
harmony, through all the discords and confusions of men; of a divine
melody, through all the cries and groans of sin and sorrow. What says a
wiser and a better man than I shall ever be, and that not of noble music,
but of such as we may hear any day in any street? "Even that vulgar
music," he says, "which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a
deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of God, the first
composer. There is something more of divinity in it than the ear
discovers. It is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole
world, and of the creatures of God.
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