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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
serious meaning than a divine art frivolously.” Look to it that there be loyal obedience, even unto death if need be!
The rays from the lamp of obedience must mingle with the other guiding lights* and in the blending of the seven we shall find the perfect sevenfold light which will make the darkness as the noonday. As to the architect, so to the musician; these lamps must be the guides. When the way is dark, and gray clouds gather thick and fast, and the heart is weary, does the artist sit down in the dark and moan and weep and become entangled in the folds of the commonplace, whose limbs reach out among all ranks to drag down to earth those who fain would rise above? If so, let him not claim brotherhood with those who are yet aspiring. He has sold his birthright for a mess of pottage that will never satisfy the craving of his soul, whose hunger may be appeased only when the new birth comes to him, when he shall be born into that life of which true artists while on earth catch faint glimpses in a dream.
From the time the morning stars first sang together, from the time when Miriam, rejoiced triumphant in singing with her maidens,
“Sound the loud trumpet o’er Egypt’s dark sea,
Jehovah has triumphed, his people are free,”
down through the ages until the beloved disciple, seeing through cycles of time, tells us of the song which has been sung in highest Heaven by the glorified worshipers, the song no man could learn save those redeemed from earth—from that time gradually unfolding its pages, developing into an art of wondrous and mysterious beauty, music, like some strange flower opening its leaves to the light, has gradually opened petal after petal, and we stand in awe as we catch faint glimpses of what the entire flower may be when all is perfected.
Perchance—who knows—this great music-thought of God may be advancing and growing greater as the ages pass, in order that it when perfected may be earth’s greatest offering to Him whose first coming was heralded by music of the heavenly host* on Bethlehem’s plain, when was sung,
“ Glory to God in the highest,
On earth peace and good will to men.”