The Honorable Walter H. Judd of Minnesota, who spent ten years as a missionary in China, is responsible for the following World War II story. It concerns an American teenage soldier who was captured by the Japanese with five of his pals. They were marched to a Japanese camp through the jungle in slush and mud with bayonets to their backs. One by one he saw his companions mutilated, and torn limb by limb. As he watched them fall he knew it was a matter of very few minutes until his turn. He said the twenty-third psalm and the Lord's prayer. Trembling from head to foot, but determined not to show his fear, he began to whistle as loud as his trembling lips would let him. After a while he became conscious of what he was whistling:
"We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing; He chastens and hastens His will to make known; The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing, Sing praises to His name; He forgets not His own."
Suddenly he realized that his Japanese captor behind him had joined him in the whistling of that hymn. The power of that hymn made them both relax, as he felt the bayonet fall from his back. Soon his captor was at his side, both singing together in English and Japanese respectively—"The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing, . . . He forgets not His own."
The Japanese captor began to speak in English. A conversation ensued. At his captor's request they knelt right there in the mud and prayed for suffering humanity and peace on earth.
The story goes on and culminates in great victory and a medal. For, as they rose from their knees in prayer, and at the Japanese's own request, he himself was taken back as prisoner to our American headquarters with many of his Christian buddies, gathered up from the foxholes. He said it was the only way he could live up to his Christianity, and thus help his own nation to become Christian.
And so, our teen-age soldier said, "I do not deserve the medal. But I never cease to wonder at the power and magnificence of a good Christian hymn."
"Sing praises to God because He has answered your prayers."—Testimonies, vol. 7, p. 274-
"The melody of praise is the atmosphere of heaven." —Education, p. 161.
"If you sit in heavenly places with Christ, you cannot refrain from praising God. Begin to educate your tongues to praise Him, and train your hearts to make melody to God, and when the evil one begins to settle his gloom about you, sing praise to God. When things go crossways at your homes, strike up a song about the matchless charms of the Son of God, and I tell you, when you touch this strain, Satan will leave you. You can drive out the enemy with his gloom ; his dark shadow will be swept from your pathway by praising God, and you can see, 0, so much clearer, the love and compassion of your Heavenly Father."—ELLEN G. WHITE in Review and Herald, Aug. 5, 1890.
"Song is a weapon that we can always use against discouragement."—Ministry of Healing, p. 254.
"The lovely birds making the air vocal with happy songs, . . . all testify to the tender, fatherly care of our God, and to His desire to make His children happy."—Steps to Christ, p. 10.
Because two youthful martyrs of Brussels burned at the stake for their new-found faith, Martin Luther became moved to write his first hymn. "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," which in reality is a paraphrase of the forty-sixth psalm, has since that time had four hundred years of ever-widening service. Many martyrs have died joyfully with this hymn on their lips. Indeed, the Reformation was won by song.
Napoleon complained that his defeat by the Russians was due to their singing army as much as their cold winter. During the Civil War the Union officers sang much. The Confederate officers said to them, "If we had had your songs, we could have defeated you. You won the victory because you had the best songs."
However that may be, this much is true, that no other cause since the world began has inspired so many hymns of praise, love, and courage as has the cause of Christianity. And these hymns teach us the joy and happiness of sacrifice.
When the most notorious infidel of the century lay dead in his home on the shores of the Hudson, the telegraph message which bore the message to the ends of the earth, also gave this information concerning the funeral : "There will be no singing." Of course not ; there are no songs for dead infidelity. But, thanks be to God, there are songs just as joyful and hopeful for the dying Christian as for the living Christian. The Christian is the only man in the world who can meet the struggles of life with a song.
It was Martin Luther who left this testimony behind : "Next to theology I give to music the high place of honor. It is a discipline and a mistress of good order and good manners. She makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable." And Sir Henry Coward has this to say: "Music is the mental vitamin... . . It steadies the nerves, calms the mind, improves the personality." In this connection he speaks of the new beatitude, "Blessed are they who are pleasant to live with."
About seventy-five miles north and west of Minneapolis is an institution called the Reformatory of St. Cloud. There are about six thousand inmates. It has been found upon examination that not one has ever had musical instruction. A similar study of Sing Sing in New York revealed that no active professional musician has ever been committed there. And such results have been found true of similar institutions.
On the other hand, when "rightly employed, it [music] is a precious gift of God, designed to uplift the thoughts to high and noble themes, to inspire and elevate the soul."—Messages to Young People, p. 291. It should be included in the eurriculum of every boy and girl and young person. It has been said that no one can hope to have a true culture and a broad education without the knowledge of music. "It has power to subdue rude and uncultivated natures ; power to quicken thought and to awaken sympathy, to promote harmony of action, and to banish the gloom and foreboding that destroy courage and weaken effort."—/bid., pp. 295, 292.
After several hours of weary discussions at a meeting of the representatives of all the Allies during World War I, Lloyd George brought out the hymnbooks, and there for one hour those men played and sang hymns. Greatly refreshed and with a cleansed and brighter atmosphere, they then proceeded with their work. Truly, "music is the medicine of the troubled mind." It has also been said that Homer Rodeheaver's gospel songs have started at least a thousand sinners along the road to salvation.
Every great movement in God's divine appointment has been accompanied with music of the very highest type. And furthermore it "forms a part of God's worship in the courts above, and we should endeavor, in our songs of praise, to approach as nearly as possible to the harmony of the heavenly choirs."—Patriarchs and Prophets, p 594. "Let all take time to cultivate the voice.' —Testimonies, vol. 9, p. 544. "Let those refuse to sing who never knew thtir God ; but children of the heavenly King may speak their joys abroad."
Only that music which pleases the heavenly Father is good music. Shall we not give our very best to the development of this most divine gift in our own lives, and in the lives of others ? For, as God's message swells to its loud cry, we need more than ever this most powerful soul-moving means of worship, music that is adapted to the power and dignity of God's last message of warning just as our brethren of the early Advent Movement had a part of their songbooks designated as "Songs of the Loud Cry," so our songs must rise to the high plane of rhythmic prophetic warning. of the approaching day when they shall blend into the song of the redeemed.
Let us surrender our hearts to Christ the Master Singer, that He may tune them to the vibrating praise of heaven. Music is "the only art of heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to heaven."
