It is said that when the sun is going out of sight, the pious Swiss herdsman of the Alps takes up his Alpine horn, and shouts loudly through it, “Praise ye the Lord.” Then a brother herdsman on some distant slope takes up the echo, “Praise ye the Lord.” Soon another answers still higher up the mountains, till hill shouts to hill, and peaks echoes to peak, the sublime anthem of praise to the Lord.
Philip Henry used strongly to recommend singing at the family altar, saying that is was a way of exhibiting godliness, like Rahab’s scarlet thread, to such as pass our windows, within sound of our voices.
A Western Captain, as he lay on the battlefield suffered greatly from a fatal gunshot wound through both thighs, and from thirst.
He said, “The stars shone out, clear and bright above the dark field, and I began to think of that great God who had given His Son to die a death of agony for me; and that He was up there—up above the scene of suffering, up above those glorious stars. I felt that I was going home to meet Him; and praise Him there, and I felt that I ought to praise God, even wounded, and on the battlefield.
So I sang that beautiful hymn, ‘Forever with the Lord.’ There was a Christian brother wounded near me. I could not see him, but I could hear him. He took up the strain, and beyond him another and another caught it, all over that terrible battlefield.”
“Children of the heavenly King
As ye journey sweetly sing.”
Sing in your families, and other hearts and other households will catch the song and be cheered by it, and the praise of God shall resound from many hearts and voices.