e,
a sonata, which takes you many a good hour's practice before you can
render it perfectly and expressively. But you shrink from a song, the
accompaniment of which you cannot read off without any trouble at all.
And you never think of such a thing as taking one-tenth the pains to
learn that accompaniment that you took to learn that sonata! Very likely,
too, you take the additional pains to learn the sonata off by heart, so
that you may play it more effectively. But you do not take pains to learn
your accompaniment by heart, so that you may throw all your power into
the expression of the words, undistracted by reading the notes and
turning over the leaves. It is far more useful to have half a dozen
Scripture songs thoroughly learnt and made your own, than to have in your
portfolios several dozen easy settings of sacred poetry which you get
through with your eyes fixed on the notes. And every one thus thoroughly
mastered makes it easier to master others.

You will say that all this refers only to drawing-room singing. So it
does, primarily, but then it is the drawing-room singing which has been
so little for Jesus and so much for self and society; and so much less
has been said about it, and so much less _done_. There would not be half
the complaints of the difficulty of witnessing for Christ in even
professedly Christian homes and circles, if every converted singer were
also a consecrated one. For nothing raises or lowers the tone of a whole
evening so much as the character of the music. There are few things which
show more clearly that, as a rule, a very definite step in advance is
needed beyond being a believer or even a worker for Christ. Over how many
grand or cottage pianos could the Irish Society's motto, 'For Jesus' sake
_only_,' be hung, without being either a frequent reproach, or altogether
inappropriate?

But what is learnt will, naturally, be sung. And oh! how many Christian
parents give their daughters the advantage of singing lessons without
troubling themselves in the least about what songs are learnt, provided
they are not exceptionally foolish! Still more pressingly I would say,
how many Christian principals, to whom young lives are entrusted at the
most important time of all for training, do not give themselves the least
concern about this matter! As I write, I turn aside to refer to a list of
songs learnt last term by a fresh young voice which would willingly be
trained for higher work. There is just