Sirach, in the Apocrypha, recommends the reader
to "beware of female singers, that they entice thee not with their
charms."

According to the views of many writers, the Hebrews had a larger harp
than the small one represented in Fig. 8. It may have been something
like one which was found in Egypt, but the form is clearly Assyrian,
belonging to the same type as the small harps already given. It
certainly is not Egyptian. (See Fig. 9.)

The liturgy of the temple must have been singularly noble and
imposing. Never had a church so grand a body of poetry as this of the
Hebrews, which they heard in the very sonorous words of David, Moses,
Isaiah and Ezekiel, with all the subtle suggestion of a vernacular as
employed by minds of the first poetic order. The Hebrew parallelism
afforded exactly the kind of formula in which one congregation could
most effectively respond to another.

"The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof;
The world and they that dwell therein;
For He hath founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the floods.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in His holy place?"

When the priests had intoned one line, we may suppose that the whole
choir of Levites made answer in the second line, completing the
parallelism.

There are other psalms in which the people have a refrain which comes
in periodically, as, for instance, in the one: "O give thanks unto
the Lord; [refrain] for His mercy endureth forever." (Ps. cxxxvi.)

[Illustration: Fig. 10.]

The voice of these masses stood to the Hebrews' mind as the feeble
type of the great song which should go up from the entire Israel of
God when the scattered members of the cult were gathered in their time
of fullness and glory. For us also the same image stands. And while
the art of this venerable and singularly gifted people did not attain
a place of commanding influence upon the tonal side of music, it
nevertheless has borne no small part in affording a vantage ground for
later art in the line of noble conceptions, inspiring motives and
brilliant suggestions. It has been, and still is, one of the most
potent influences in the art-music of the world. Nor is it without
interest that the scattered representatives of this race have been
and continue to be ministers of art in all the lands into which they
have come. The race of Israel has made a proud record in modern music,
no less than that of