our short journey through the centuries of music, we have returned
to him who has succeeded in the great work of restoring to its honorable
place the music of the synagogue, sorely missed, ardently longed for,
and bringing back to us old songs in a new guise. An old song and a new
melody! The old song of abiding love, loyalty, and resignation to the
will of God! His motto was the beautiful verse: "My strength and my song
is the Lord"; and his unchanging refrain, the jubilant exclamation:
"Blessed be thou, fair Musica!" A wise man once said: "Hold in high
honor our Lady of Music!" The wise man was Martin Luther--another
instance this of the conciliatory power of music, standing high above
the barriers raised by religious differences. It is worthy of mention,
on this occasion, that at the four hundredth anniversary celebration in
honor of Martin Luther, in the Sebaldus church at Nuremberg, the most
Protestant of the cities of Germany, called by Luther himself "the eye
of God," a psalm of David was sung to music composed by our guest of the
day.

"Hold in high honor our Lady of Music!" We will be admonished by the
behest, and give honor to the artist by whose fostering care the music
of the synagogue enjoys a new lease of life; who, with pious zeal, has
collected our dear old melodies, and has sung them to us with all the
ardor and power with which God in His kindness endowed him.

"The sculptor must simulate life, of the poet I demand intelligence;
The soul can be expressed only by Polyhymnia!"

An orphan, song wandered hither and thither through the world, met,
after many days, by the musician, who compassionately adopted it, and
clothed it with his melodies. On the pinions of music, it now soars
whithersoever it listeth, bringing joy and blessing wherever it alights.
"The old song, the new melody!" Hark! through the silence of the night
in this solemn moment, one of those old songs, clad by our _maestro_ in
a new melody, falls upon our ears: "I remember unto thee the kindness of
thy youth, the love of thy espousals, thy going after me in the
wilderness, through a land that is not sown!"

Hearken! Can we not distinguish in its notes, as they fill our ears, the
presage of a music of the future, of love and good-will? We seem to hear
the rustle of the young leaves of a new spring, the resurrection
foretold thousands of years agone by our poets and prophets. We see
slowly dawning that great day on which mankind,