EXTRACT

Deborah of old confirms this, “Let them that love him be as the rising of the sun in its might”, Judges 5: 31. She had such a sense of good in the great hymn, “Then sang Deborah”. I have been thinking lately that we do not sing enough, that the thought of singing is rather dying out amongst the brethren. I have been thinking, too, that the service of God is more made up of singing than of ordinary speaking. If you take the history of the service of God in the Scriptures, I think you will find that the leading thought in it is singing, and you can see how it must be so. The Lord spoke on the cross of singing. It is one of the most touching things, that the Lord could devote Himself to the praises of Israel while hanging on the gibbet. He says, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He does not say that in song. That is not the subject of song. But He also says, “But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel”, Psalm 22: 3. He spoke of that. Would He not allude to what we find emanating from the saints in the Old Testament? David is the great leader of praise, the sweet psalmist of Israel. The Lord anticipated it. It was the Spirit of God in David who spoke in Psalm 22, and we can understand the references in 1 Chronicles, and in the great book of Psalms too, that God inhabited that; not simply that He heard the praises, but He inhabited the praises. Solomon says to Him, “The heavens, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain thee” (1 Kings 8: 27), but the Lord in Spirit says, “Thou who inhabitest the praises of Israel”. He found His dwelling place, His joy, in the praises of Israel.

J. Taylor (Vol. 75, pp.242, 243)

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